SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 



SOCIAL 
SILHOUETTES 



BY 

GEORGE W. E. RUSSELL 

AUTHOR OF "COLLECTIONS AND RECOLLECTIONS " 



' ' Such is the world. Understand it, despise it, 
love it ; cheerfully hold on thy way through it, with 
thy eyes on higher loadstars." 

Carlyle, Count Cagliostro. 



SECOND EDITION 



NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY 

31 West Twenty-third Street 
1906 



3t %9 



Printed by 

Ballantyne, Hanson <^ Co. 

Edinburgh 



^/ $ 



TO 
THOMAS, LORD RIBBLESDALE 

IN MEMORY OF THE DAYS 

WHEN I EDITED " THE HARROVIAN " 

AND HE WAS 

A VALUED CONTRIBUTOR 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. THE SCHOOLBOY . I 

II. THE SCHOOLMASTER 1 3 

III. THE OXFORD DON 24 

IV. THE OXFORD UNDERGRADUATE 30 
V. THE B.A 37 

VI. THE CANDIDATE FOR ORDERS .... 43 

VII. THE CURATE 49 

VIII. THE COUNTRY PARSON 56 

IX. THE TOWN PARSON 62 

X. THE BISHOP 68 

XL THE PAINFUL PREACHER 74 

XII. THE POPULAR PREACHER 80 

XIII. THE JOURNALIST 89 

XIV. THE FADDIST 95 

XV. THE SOLDIER 102 

XVI. THE DOCTOR I08 

XVII. THE ELDEST SON 114 

XVIII. THE CANDIDATE FOR PARLIAMENT . . . 120 

XIX. THE HAPPY CANDIDATE 1 29 

XX. THE MIDDLE-AGED M.P 1 38 

XXI. THE LABOUR-MEMBER 144 

XXII. THE WHIG 150 

XXIII. THE PARTY HACK 157 

XXIV. THE OFFICIAL M.P 164 

vii 



Vlll 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. 

XXV. THE AUTHOR 
XXVI. THE AUTHORESS 
XXVII. THE BUSY IDLER 
XXVIII. THE CLUB-MAN . 
XXIX. THE DINER-OUT. 
XXX. THE DINNER-GIVER 
XXXI. THE INVALID 
XXXII. THE SQUIRE 

XXXIII. THE PLUTOCRAT 

XXXIV. THE ELECTION-AGENT 
XXXV. THE CARPET-BAGGER 

XXXVI. THE DISINHERITED KNIGHT 

XXXVII. THE VICTOR . . 

XXXVIII. THE QUIDNUNC . 

XXXIX. THE COLLECTOR 

XL. THE CITY MAN . 

XLI. THE PHILANTHROPIST 

XLII. THE PROFESSIONAL PHILANTHROPIST 

XLIII. THE TOADY 

XLIV. THE BUCK . 

XLV. THE WORLDLING 

XLVI. L'ENVOI 



PAGE 
I70 

177 

I84 

191 

I98 

204 

211 

2l8 
224 
23I 
238 
245 
252 
26o 
267 
275 
283 
290 
298 

305 
312 

321 



SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 



CHAPTER I 

THE SCHOOLBOY 

" The Child is Father of the Man/' as Wordsworth 
remarks in a line which, if it were not embedded 
in a poem, might easily be taken for prose. And 
a gallery of Social Silhouettes cannot begin more 
conveniently than with a study of the Schoolboy. 
In a mass of discordant and mutually destruc- 
tive criticisms on Mr. Vachell's school-story, " The 
Hill," by far the wisest was that of the Times, which 
said that boys are so odd and so incalculable that 
no one can safely affirm what they will or will not 
say or do. They are what Mr. Chadband called 
" human boys," and that is about as much as can be 
safely predicated of them as a race. It is possible 
that there may be found among them such dirty 
little beasts as " Stalky and Co." or such blameless 
bores as w holy and happy Edwin Russell " in 
" Eric " ; such bumptious boors as Tom Tulliver, 
the sort of boy who is commonly spoken of as 
being " very fond of animals — that is, very fond of 

A 



2 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

throwing stones at them " ; or such self-conscious 
prigs as Kenelm Chillingly, who asked his mamma 
if she was not sometimes overwhelmed by a sense 
of her own identity. " After all, Dr. Vaughan," said 
an indulgent father when his hirsute son of nine- 
teen had committed some more than usually mon- 
strous act — u after all, we must remember that 
boys will be boys." "Undoubtedly," replied the 
suave Doctor ; " but they shall not, with my con- 
sent, be vicious men." 

Do different Schools produce different types 
of character ? The answer is best given in an 
apologue from Oxford. A lady, arriving late at 
a College Concert and finding no vacant chair, 
was met by three stewards, reared respectively at 
Eton, Winchester, and Rugby (or, as some editions 
read, Harrow). The Eton man made a thousand 
apologies, could not conceive how such a mishap 
had occurred, implored her to wait a moment, and 
was quite sure that there would be a vacant seat 
directly. The Wykehamist said never a word, but 
went out and fetched a chair. The Rugbeian (or 
Harrovian) sat down on the chair which the 
Wykehamist had fetched. This, indeed, may be 
an allegory ; but it conveys a substantial truth. 
" Every school should make the most of that which 
is its characteristic. Eton should continue to culti- 
vate taste." And so it does, together with a keen 
sense of beauty and fitness, charming manners, 
and seemly dress. Where Eton leads Radley 
follows, and the resemblance between the pro- 



THE SCHOOLBOY 3 

ducts of the two is so close as to deceive the 
very elect. 

" Harrow may be more clever, 
Rugby may make more row ; 
But we'll swing for ever, 

Steady from stroke to bow ; 
And nothing in life shall sever 
The chain that is round us now." 

So sang the Poet Laureate of Eton in his famous 
Boating Song. It is true that the Sons of the Hill 
have fondly imagined that their special character- 
istic was a peculiar blend of strenuousness with 
sentiment — the culture of the emotions as incen- 
tives to high effort. Ever since Dr. Arnold's day 
moral earnestness has been supposed to be the 
ideal of Rugby. But the judgments of the poets 
are final ; so Harrovians must put up with the 
doubtful praise of comparative cleverness, and 
"Old Rugs" with the undoubted reproach of 
superior rowdiness. 

There is no need to trace these special char- 
acteristics in fuller detail. Let us now disregard 
sub-divisions and consider the Schoolboy as a 
whole. First and foremost, it must always be 
borne in mind that he is the product of an 
unnatural system. He is a "sport," or variety 
of the human animal, artificially produced by 
studied violation of natural law, and, as Gibbon 
says, "outraged Nature will have her revenges." 
We take children of nine or ten, drag them away 
from all the refining and sanctifying influences 



4 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

of home and parents and brothers and sisters, 
and keep them, through the ten most impression- 
able years of life, herded together in barracks 
under a system of unreasonable restraints and 
not more reasonable indulgences. The product of 
this hazardous experiment is the English School- 
boy. How well we know him and his curiously- 
assorted qualities ! He is physically brave, but 
morally timid ; or, as some one said, he is not 
morally brave enough to be physically a coward. 
He has no respect for weakness or adversity. He 
worships strength and success and athletic skill 
with a dog-like and rather contemptible devotion. 
He is the bond-slave of tradition, convention, and 
commonplace. He has absolutely no sense of 
humour, and the only objects which excite his 
laughter are physical infirmities, athletic failures, 
and departures from the ways to which he is 
accustomed. At a Coronation the King's Scholars 
of Westminster have a prescriptive right to acclaim 
the Sovereign as he enters the nave of the Abbey. 
At the rehearsals in June 1902, they mounted to 
the organ-loft and yelled "Vivat Rex Edwardus" 
with the traditionally English pronunciation. The 
present Dean, Dr. Robinson, on whom the arrange- 
ments chiefly devolved, suggested that it might 
be better to use the ecclesiastical or Continental 
method of pronouncing ; but the Captain of the 
School replied with becoming gravity, " No, sir ; 
we have said * Vivat' for three hundred years, 
and we can't begin saying ' Vee va } now." It may 



THE SCHOOLBOY 5 

be conceded that there is something impressive 
in this obedience to a tradition of three centuries ; 
but the ordinary schoolboy submits just as blindly 
to a tradition of five years. " I think that is new/' 
said the present writer to a Harrow boy, with 
reference to some detail of school-costume. "No, 
sir," replied the urchin ; " it has been so ever since 
I have been in the School." Further enquiry 
elicited (not without a struggle) the fact that it 
was the urchin's first term. 

Of course the normal Schoolboy despises intel- 
lectual excellence ; or, at any rate, he feels it due to 
convention to profess that he does, while perhaps 
in his caitiff heart he really admires and envies it. 
But he really and ex aninto despises and detests 
the quality which, if his ethical standard were not 
entirely debased, he ought most to admire — the 
dogged and unsuccessful diligence of a stupid and 
conscientious boy. " He's a Swat, and a Skew too " 
is the final word of contemptuous condemnation, 
as it comes rolling to me on the wave of memory. 

Is the Schoolboy cruel? To answer "Yes" 
would be too railing an accusation. But un- 
doubtedly a taste for cruelty is an ugly feature 
of a certain period in boy-life, and those who dis- 
play it most markedly do not of necessity turn out 
cruel men in after life. Again, the immemorial 
tradition of English Schools recognizes certain 
forms of physical hardship as salutary, and the 
partition which divides these from cruelty is 
perilously thin. To the unsophisticated mind, it 



6 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

looks like cruelty to compel a delicate child to play 
a game which hurts him, or to inflict stripes upon 
him because a bigger boy's tea-kettle doesn't 
boil. But all these long-sanctioned austerities still 
flourish in perennial vigour. The British Parent 
loves to have it so, and the British Schoolmaster 
is always ready with his bland assurance that all 
is for the best in the best of all possible schools. 
The only marvel is that the British School- 
boy, engendered by such a system and nurtured 
among such traditions, is half such a good fellow 
as he often is. 

Before now I have been accused of calumniating 
the system of our Public Schools and the type of 
boy which it produces ; but really there is no 
justice in the accusation. As a matter of fact, 
the system which I have attacked is that of 
the Boarding School generally, not that of the 
Public School in particular. Once granted that 
it is right for us to send our "bleating progeny," 
from the sanctities and safeguards of the home, to 
the changes and chances of life in a barrack a 
hundred miles away, I fully admit that Eton or 
Winchester is infinitely preferable to Crichton 
House, where Dr. Grimstone rules, or Lycurgus 
House Academy, Peckham, of which Mr. Bottles 
was the most distinguished product. In brief, 
I regard the system of the Public School as 
the method by which the ingrained evils of the 
Boarding School are lowered to their irreducible 
minimum. 



THE SCHOOLBOY 7 

Let me enumerate the best traits which are to 
be found in the mixed life and character of a 
Public School. 

The better sort of Public Schoolboy is a gentle- 
man. He is free from all taint of snobbishness. 
He does not (though his master sometimes does) 
a meanly admire mean things." He is notoriously 
indifferent — even hostile — to the claims of birth 
and rank. Mr. Leveson-Gower, in his delightful 
book of tl Bygone Years," writes as follows about 
social distinctions at Eton : — u There is a well- 
known story about my friend the late Lord B , 

who on his first arrival at Eton was asked his 

name, and answered, ' I am Viscount W , and I 

shall be Marquis of B .' Upon which he re- 
ceived two kicks, one for the Viscount and the 
other for the Marquis. This story may not be 
true, but at any rate it illustrates the fact that at 
Eton if a boy boasted of his social advantages he 
would have cause to repent it." 

The better sort of Public Schoolboy is wholly 
free from the base vice of money-worship. Mr. 
Gladstone left it on record that at the Eton of his 
own day a no boy was ever estimated either more 
or less because he had much money to spend. It 
added nothing to him if he had much ; it took 
nothing from him if he had little." And what was 
then true of Eton boys as a class is still certainly 
true of the better sort of Public Schoolboy wher- 
ever his lot is cast. He values money just in so far 
as it enables him to get a better racquet or more 



8 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

strawberries and cream — or even, and this is no 
touch of fancy, to buy little comforts for some sick 
cottager or servant, or to help a broken-down 
tramp on the road. He spends his money per- 
haps rather foolishly and rashly while he has it ; 
certainly he does not save it. When it is gone, 
he puts up cheerfully with his loss ; and most 
assuredly he does not estimate his school-fellows 
by the greater or less amount of it which they 
may possess. In brief, the better sort of Public 
Schoolboy is as indifferent to money as an Oxford 
Undergraduate, and one cannot say more. 

Again, there is, deep down in the heart of a 
Public School, a large and often unsuspected fund 
of chivalry. This may sound absolutely incon- 
sistent with what I said before about the school- 
boy's contempt for weakness ; but the contradiction 
is only apparent. An odious and immemorial 
tradition regards weakness as contemptible, makes 
a "little boy's exercise ancillary to a big boy's 
amusement," and teaches that every conceivable 
hardship "does the little beggar good." But this 
is tradition only ; and, though tradition is bale- 
fully strong, some forces are stronger still. The 
heart and conscience of better boyhood dislikes 
cruelty and tyranny. A well-conditioned boy 
often pities weakness more than he dares to show. 
Moral cowardice makes him ashamed to reveal 
his nobler instincts. And here, if anywhere in 
the governance of a school, a Head Master who 
is worth his salt (let alone ^5000 a year) will 



THE SCHOOLBOY 9 

make his influence felt. He will bring the hidden 
fund of chivalry to light, and so cultivate the 
public opinion of his boys that weakness is no 
longer despised and oppressed, but helped and 
encouraged and gallantly defended against supe- 
rior force. "John Verney looked down upon the 
delicately-tinted face, the small, regular, girlish 
features, the red, quivering mouth. Suddenly he 
grasped that this was an appeal from weakness 
to strength, and that he, no older and but a little 
bigger than the other, had strength to spare — 
strength to shoulder burdens other than his own." 
As with chivalry, so also with romance, poetry, 
imagination, love of literature, even the sense of 
humour. The tradition of a school is opposed 
to all alike. It has come down from time im- 
memorial that the "right thing" for a Public 
Schoolboy is to be prosaic, literal, business-like 
in play, conventional in language and action, and 
to hate books. To make a joke to a young school- 
boy is a deadly insult. He glares sullenly at the 
joker, calls him a beastly fool, and threatens 
physical violence if the joke goes further. Now 
all this a capable schoolmaster may correct, if 
he cannot abolish. It was Dr. Farrar's great gift 
that he could make dull and ignorant boys feel 
ashamed of their ignorance and anxious to learn. 
Who ever fell under "Billy Johnson's" spell and 
failed to learn the idealism and the romance which 
underlie the life of a Public School ? To laugh 
at one's master is the perennial joy of youth ; to 



io SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

laugh with him— to laugh at really happy jests 
admirably delivered — was the less usual lot of 
Harrow boys listening to Dr. Butler. 

But the portraiture of the Public Schoolboy, if 
it is to be true to life, must show some more 
definite lines and some richer colours than these. 
Friendship in its best and highest sense — the deep, 
self-sacrificing, perhaps unspoken, devotion of two 
boys equal in age, powers, and opportunities — 
is the heart's blood of a Public School. And re- 
ligion itself, the crown and climax of all that is 
lovely in human character, has often flourished 
with a strong though unostentatious growth in 
the Playing Fields and under the Spire. 

That no one should condemn my portrait as 
exaggerated, let me cite from a published essay by 
my friend Canon MacColl a human document of 
pathetic interest. Lord John Boteville Thynne was 
the second son of the fourth Marquis of Bath. He 
was born in 1867, went to Eton in 1880, and thence 
into the 9th Lancers. Just before his twentieth 
birthday he was killed by a fall, his horse stumbling 
on a tram-rail in York, where his regiment was 
stationed. The day before his fatal accident he had 
spent an hour in hospital, reading to and comforting 
a soldier of his troop who was seriously ill. The 
trooper only survived him for a few hours, his death 
being accelerated by the shock of the sad news. 
"In beauty of person and loveliness of character," 
says Canon MacColl, " John Thynne was the most 
attractive youth I ever saw." Two traits of his 



THE SCHOOLBOY n 

character may now be related which his modesty 
would have concealed, (i) His experience at Eton 
impressed him with the urgent need of creating a 
public opinion among schoolboys in favour of 
morality. "A boy, he said, who was known to 
have told a lie was disgraced. Was it not possible, 
then, to make schoolboys feel that any violation 
of morality was also disgraceful ? Would it be 
practicable to start Guilds of Purity in all our 
Public Schools ? His beautiful face was aglow 
with enthusiasm as he spoke. Some people, 
pitifully ignorant of the noble side of human 
nature, are apt to associate moral virtue in men 
with unmanliness or constitutional defects. John 
Thynne was as brave and manly as he was pure 
in heart and affectionate in disposition — a good rider 
and devoted to athletic sports and outdoor exer- 
cise." (2) Not long before his untimely death John 
Thynne asked an elder friend, u with the engaging 
diffidence of one who was afraid of being thought 
better than he was," whether the friend would do 
him a favour. Ever since his father had given him 
a regular allowance he had laid aside a tenth part 
for religious and charitable uses. Would his friend 
take charge of this tithe and dispense it? Per- 
haps it might help some poor fellow through the 
University. "When I come of age," he said, 
"the tenth of my income will be really worth 
something." The friend adds : — " He made me 
promise to keep these plans secret even from 
his nearest relations; but I think that I do not 



12 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

violate the spirit of my promise by revealing 
them now." 

If Eton produced such a character as this only 
once in a hundred years, it would go far towards 
redeeming the system of our Public Schools from 
some just, and also some unjust, reproaches. 



P.S. — While, these pages were passing through 
the press, I noticed this instructive case in the 
Police Reports — 

"At Eastbourne A. B. was summoned for as- 
saulting a boy named Carey, nine years of age. 
The defendant and his two sisters were rowing 
in a boat when a number of stones were thrown 
in their direction by some lads ashore, among 
whom was Carey. The defendant landed, caught 
Carey, and threw him into the sea. The de- 
fendant's father asked the Bench to bear in mind 
that he was captain of a large Public School he had 
just left. He had been taught it to be his duty to 
punish boys on the spur of the moment. The Chair- 
man told the defendant he had narrowly escaped 
being charged with manslaughter ; he must pay a 
fine of £i and costs." 



CHAPTER II 

THE SCHOOLMASTER 

The late Lord Houghton had never been a school- 
boy, but he took an interest in the sayings and 
doings of school-life akin to that which an un- 
travelled Londoner might take in the story of 
Arctic or Antarctic discovery. He accumulated, 
if I remember aright, some hundred books about 
schools and schoolboys and schoolmasters. Well- 
remembered faces from that scholastic gallery 
seem to shine down on me as I write. I see Mr. 
Squeers with his " First Class in English Spelling 
and Philosophy " ; Mr. Creakle at breakfast, with 
the cane, the newspaper, and the buttered toast 
on the table ; and Dr. Blimber with his blue- 
coated butler, and his ample rhetoric about the 
Early Romans. Thackeray, too, gave us some 
pleasant pictures of schoolmasters, 1 such as were 
Dr. Birch and the Head Master of Grey Friars, and 
Mr. Anstey Guthrie drew the more modern sort, 
with consummate skill, in his Dr. Grimstone. It 
is easy to make fun of Dean Farrar's passionate 
sentimentalism and chromatic style, but " Eric," 
with its portraits of Mr. Rose and Mr. Gordon, still 

1 Mrs. Richmond Ritchie has told us that the awful Miss Pinkerton 
was drawn from the master of Thackeray's first school at Chiswick. 

13 



14 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

holds its own, though a forgetful generation has 
lost sight of li Basil the Schoolboy " and his friend 
a Dear Dibbins " (who always wore black trousers 
because they were more recherche than colours), 
and of the gentleman who examined them in 
Thucydides. 

The Schoolmaster is the theme of our present 
meditations. Let us note some of his characteristics. 

i. The modern Schoolmaster is keen. I am 
well aware that a certain number of men adopt 
the Schoolmaster's profession simply for want of 
a better. Their academical qualification is enough, 
and they wish to make money and marry early. 
Probably no other profession offers so good an 
opening to beginners. Even men who become 
Schoolmasters from this motive catch keenness 
from their worthier colleagues ; and, if they can- 
not feel it, at least they simulate it. A profession 
of indifference to the school and its interests would 
be thought bad form. So the modern School- 
master invariably is, or seems to be, keen about 
his boys and all their concerns — work and play, 
health and morals, history and prospects. 

2. The modern Schoolmaster is amiable. The 
tradition of roughness and hardship in dealing 
with boys has perished, and only the most un- 
fledged and amateurish masters attempt "scores" 
and sarcasms. In some instances, of course, the 
pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme, 
and the Master is, as "C. S. C." might say, " op- 
pressively bland and fond." There is a peculiar 



THE SCHOOLMASTER 15 

intonation of the words " My boy," which can be 
assumed officially like the cap and gown, and laid 
aside, with an obvious sense of relief, when Dr. 
Birch's Young Friends have shuffled out of the 
drawing-room. But all this, though perhaps a 
little artificial, is a vast improvement on the old- 
fashioned brutality ; and the great majority of 
modern Schoolmasters are really, as well as pro- 
fessedly, fond of and kind to their boys. 

3. The modern Schoolmaster worships the Moloch 
of Athleticism. Very likely he is himself a good 
athlete ; a hero at " Rugger " ; a " Blue," or an 
" International." Not long ago, when I was 
visiting a Public School, I noticed an aggressively 
muscular gentleman, something like a dragoon 
in a B.A. gown. In reply to my enquiries, a 
boy by my side murmured — u Oh, that's Bump- 
stead, the new Cricket-Master." What would Dr. 
Arnold have said to a u cricket-master " ? How 
would Eric have fared in the hands of such a 
pedagogue ? And how good it would have been 
for Stalky and Co. to fall into his grasp ! 

But, even where a Schoolmaster has no athletic 
prowess of his own, he fully realizes that the athletes 
are both the most hubristic and the most influential 
members of the school. So he cultivates his own 
convenience when he gives way to their turbulence, 
and he hugs to his soul the amazing delusion 
that he is also serving the best interests of the 
school, because the most athletic boys are also the 
most virtuous. 



1 6 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

4. After the Athletes, but very far after them, 
come the Scholars. A famous cricketer who, as 
boy and master, spent all his life at Eton, told 
the Public School Commission in 1862 that the 
fact that a boy was known to be the best scholar 
at Eton would not do him any harm, provided 
he was sufficiently good at games. And this 
tradition seems to have spread to all schools and 
seminaries of sound knowledge and religious educa- 
tion. The etymological idea of school as cr^okr), the 
place of repose from boisterous activity, has made 
way for the grander conception of a vast arena 
where physical perfections can be displayed to 
the greatest advantage, and where the anaemic 
bookworm must hide his diminished head while the 
triumphant procession of the "Bloods" marches 
majestically past him. 

5. Are Schoolmasters snobs ? Do they, that is, 
" meanly admire mean things " and mean people ? 
The answer must be carefully pondered. Thacke- 
ray had a keen nose for the taint of snobbish- 
ness, and he knew the characteristic foibles of 
the Schoolmaster ; but, if I remember right, 
his Schoolmasters are not snobs. They flog the 
nobly born and the others with equal and in- 
discriminating vigour. An Eton man, the most 
pungent of living critics, has said that " the Uni- 
versity Don, especially if he be a Radical, has 
an inexplicable delight in pupils with handles to 
their names ; but Eton masters are too well 
acquainted with the commodity to appraise it 



THE SCHOOLMASTER 17 

above its value." A few years ago lordlings were 
as plentiful at Westminster and Harrow as at 
Eton. Winchester still gathered its pupils from 
the great families of the West ; and even Rugby 
(though Vivian Grey esteemed it "so devilish 
blackguard ") could show such names as Craven 
and Lyttelton and Douglas ; but during the last 
five-and-twenty years Eton has been absorbing 
more and more of what are commonly called 
" the Great Families of England." To-day it has 
nearly monopolized them. A few of the old names 
still survive in the schools which "Society" has 
deserted ; and, if a Schoolmaster gloats over these 
survivals with a rather undignified rapture, it is 
charitable to surmise that he is inspired by the 
historic sense, and not by the base passion which 
Thackeray denounced. 

6. The modern Schoolmaster is a reformer. 
He lives, indeed, in the narrowest groove, and 
in an atmosphere dominated to an inconceiv- 
able degree by traditions not old enough to be 
venerable. The older Schoolmaster, whatever his 
political opinion might be, was in all matters 
touching his profession the most immovable of 
conservatives. But here the lapse of years has 
brought a notable change. The Schoolmaster of 
the present day longs passionately to be Modern. 
He is even desperately anxious to keep in touch 
with the movement of the world. He regards 
as the gravest of misfortunes the reproach of 

being fossilized and out of date. Hence Reforms 

B 



1 8 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

all round ; and the general tendency and drift 
of these reforms is beyond question beneficial. 
Probably every year as it passes leaves the 
Schoolmasters of England wiser and more capable 
men than it found them. And what is true of 
themselves is naturally true of their administra- 
tion. The system of the Boarding School may be 
inherently and incurably bad — I pronounce no 
opinion, — but it seems to be about as firmly 
established as any other institution of our national 
life, and the tide of Reform has swept away every 
evil which is not by its nature ineradicable. 

7. One may be a very good reformer oneself 
and yet dislike other people's reforms. In that case 
we call them "fads," and stigmatize their authors 
as lt Faddists." The plain man, the man of the 
world, the man in the street — not least the British 
Parent — has a holy horror of a Fad. When the 
Head Mastership of Eton was last vacant we were 
assured by those who ought to know that no 
Faddist need apply ; and that to clothe the 
Eton boys in Jaeger, to feed them on pulse, or 
to abolish the Beagles were ideals equally and 
indefinitely removed from the sphere of actuality. 
Well, the man in the street was wrong for once. 
Mr. Lyttelton was elected ; and a reformer whose 
reforms run to the very edge of fanaticism is at 
the head of the strongest and most intractable 
institution in the educational world. The history 
of Mr. Lyttelton's election cannot be made known, 
but it may at least be safely surmised that his 



THE SCHOOLMASTER 



1 9 



success was not procured by the surrender of 
his most serious convictions. The Lytteltons 
are not built that way. Eton has at length got 
a reforming Head Master ; but one great reform, 
repeatedly urged on her, she has once again re- 
fused to make. She has declined to have a lay 
Head Master. She has chosen a man who is a 
priest in every fibre of his being. 

The notion that education is in some sense a 
function of the priestly office has come down to 
modern England with other u enchantments of the 
Middle Age." It was natural enough at a time 
when the clergy were the sole depositories of 
learning, and it expressed itself in such founda- 
tions as Winchester and Eton — colleges of priests 
charged with the duty of performing divine service 
and of educating a certain number of boys in 
grammar, plain-song, and the fear of God. Even 
that great revival and diffusion of culture which we 
call almost indifferently the Reformation and the 
Renaissance did not destroy, though to some ex- 
tent it modified, the mediaeval conception of edu- 
cation. Queen Elizabeth's " College of St. Peter, 
Westminster," is in its constitution a copy of the 
Colleges of "St. Mary Winton" and "Blessed 
Mary of Eton," and the statute of the Edwardian 
and Elizabeth grammar-schools, such as John 
Lyon's " Free Grammar Schole at Harrowe-on-the- 
Hill," always required that the Schoolmaster should 
be in Holy Orders. The canon of 1603 decrees 
that " no man shall teach either in public school 



20 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

or private house, but such as shall be allowed by 
the bishop of the diocese, being found meet 
as well for his learning and dexterity in teaching 
as for sober and honest conversation, and also for 
right understanding of God's true religion." 

But, though the tradition that education is an 
ecclesiastical function still survived, as years went 
on it was modified in practice. The work of 
teaching was separated from the work of preach- 
ing, In the older schools, or, more strictly, " col- 
leges," the Provost or Warden, assisted by the 
Fellows and chaplains, celebrated the Holy Com- 
munion, conducted the daily and weekly services, 
and periodically preached sermons, which, by their 
inaudibility and inapplicability, enabled many gene- 
rations of Wykehamists and Etonians to make 
merry with their friends. The work of teaching 
and the work of flogging — those curiously-related 
functions — were entrusted to a " scholemaster " or 
" archididaskalos," or " magister informator." In 
such schools as Harrow and Rugby, which had no 
collegiate constitution and no school-chapel, the 
Head Master and his assistants were teachers only. 
They had no opportunity of preaching to the boys, 
who were marched on Sundays to the Parish 
Church, and endured more or less impatiently the 
ordinary ministrations of the parochial clergy. 
The system of education was still in the technical 
sense " religious," but the function of teaching had 
been separated from that of preaching. 

In 1820 a School-Chapel was built at Rugby, and 



THE SCHOOLMASTER 21 

a chaplain appointed. Dr. Arnold, soon after his 
election to the Head Mastership in 1828, got himself 
made chaplain in order to secure the opportunity 
of preaching to the boys. "The business of a 
Schoolmaster," he said, "no less than that of a 
parish minister, is the cure of souls.'* This theory 
of the Schoolmaster's office was a return to the 
mediaeval idea, and the practical convenience of 
combining the teacher's with the preacher's office 
recommended the plan to other schools. 

In 1839 a School-Chapel was built at Harrow, 
and the boys were withdrawn, at first partially 
and then completely, from the Parish Church. 
Dr. Vaughan, himself trained by Arnold, regarded 
it as a matter of the highest importance to the 
religious life of a school that the Head Master 
should be the chief officiant in its public wor- 
ship, and also its habitual preacher. His school- 
sermons, following those of Arnold and Moberly, 
and followed in turn by Temple and Butler and 
Farrar, did much to establish the notion that a 
Head Master must be a clergyman, and that, when 
a vacancy occurs in the high places of education, 
no layman need apply. 

Has this notion any grounds in reason or ex- 
perience ? An Act of Parliament has thrown head- 
masterships open to laymen, but Governing Bodies 
refuse to elect them. Why ? Let it be granted 
that a Schoolmaster should have the opportunity 
of addressing his boys on religious topics. He has 
that opportunity abundantly whenever he chooses 



22 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

to call them together. But, say the lovers of the 
established order, a sermon in chapel, reinforced 
by the aesthetic and historic charms of the building, 
has more effect than a " pi jaw " in a schoolroom. 
Granted again ; but in these days, when bishops 
habitually license laymen to speak in consecrated 
buildings, it surely would be easy for a lay Head 
Master to obtain a licence and preach to his heart's 
content. A chaplain in Holy Orders would of 
course be required for the services of the chapel 
and the altar ; and it is to be borne in mind that 
in the administration of Sacraments it is desirable 
to concentrate the attention of the worshippers 
on the act done rather than on the person doing 
it. Outside chapel a lay Head Master or a lay 
Assistant Master, if he be a really religious man, 
is to the full as effective as a clergyman, and in- 
finitely more effective than a man who has become 
a clergyman in order to qualify himself for a 
professional prize. The best set of Confirma- 
tion-questions ever composed at Eton was the 
handiwork of William Johnson, a layman whom 
most men called an Agnostic. One of the most 
truly and effectively religious Schoolmasters of 
the present day is a layman whose conscientious 
refusal to seek Holy Orders has robbed him of 
richly-earned promotion. 

When a Governing Body are fortunate enough 
to find a Schoolmaster who combines the secular 
qualifications for his office with a vocation to 
Holy Orders already realized and obeyed, they 



THE SCHOOLMASTER 23 

do well to elect him, and happily there are such 
instances, though their number is not great. But 
the spectacle of a man of middle age seeking 
Ordination concurrently with a Head Mastership 
does not conduce to edification. The motive may 
be sincere enough, but the act is palpably liable 
to misconstruction. It is not fair on the school- 
masters themselves thus to set snares for their 
consciences. And the effect on the religious edu- 
cation of the schools is seldom beneficial. These 
belated and professional ordinations generally 
issue in what Matthew Arnold called a "vague 
religiosity." The flaccid undenominationalism 
which too often passes for religious teaching in 
school-pulpits stands in sharp contrast with the 
dogmatic precision of the Catechism and the 
Creeds ; and boys who perceive discrepancy will 
not be slow to impute insincerity. Dogma should 
be taught, and rites which imply dogma should 
be celebrated, by men who believe in dogma. 
Men who disbelieve in it should not be debarred 
by that disbelief from the chief prizes of their 
profession, nor yet induced to squeeze their con- 
sciences into dogmatic formulas. The present 
religion of the Public Schools is very dear at the 
price, when that price is the exclusion of the best 
men from the highest places. 



CHAPTER III 
THE OXFORD DON 

The late Mr. W. E. Forster, after meeting a fas- 
tidious Fellow of Trinity, Cambridge, at a London 
dinner-party, exclaimed with some contempt — 
"Wherever one met that man one never could 
mistake him for anything but an Oxford Don." 
This cursory characterization by a very non- 
academical mind may perhaps witness to a cer- 
tain intellectual or social aroma common to the 
fine flower of both Universities. I have sniffed 
it so exclusively on the banks of the Isis that I 
hesitate to meddle with the fauna and flora of 
the Cam ; but I am assured by men who have 
explored the banks of both those streams that 
the Don is really very much the same creature 
at Oxford and at Cambridge, though different 
terminologies may be used to express his nature, 
function, and environment. In the terminology 
of a sister-University an Oxford man might very 
easily go astray, and I therefore prefer to describe 
the Don as I know him among the " dreaming 
spires," — in the Common-rooms and Parks of 
Oxford. 

The Don's leading characteristic is that he takes 

24 



THE OXFORD DON 25 

himself and his position and duties very seriously. 
The newly-elected head of a large college found 
himself the rejoicing father of a fine boy, and 
wrote in ecstasy to the editor of a London news- 
paper requesting that an event so epoch-making 
might be made the subject of a leading article. 
The editor, who loved irony, wrote back that 
such high themes were above his poor powers, 
and the Master, or Provost, or whatever he was, 
must write his own article. The happy father 
took him at his word. The article came by re- 
turn of post, and the editor had to print it, and 
has never again tried the ironic method with the 
head of a college. 

Quite recently a Don of more human type told 
his friends that he must soon resign his post. 
He said, with excellent self - knowledge, " I am 
really no longer fit for it, for I can no longer take 
the undergraduates seriously. I cannot get up 
any great indignation over their offences, or any 
great enthusiasm over their virtues." But of 
indignation and enthusiasm the ordinary Don is 
wholly compact. He runs laboriously with the 
Boat, and seeks to acquire influence by taking 
virtuous undergraduates for walks, and preaches 
sternly to the intemperate and the idle from the 
impressive text — "Spartam nactus es ; hanc ex- 
orna." Not a doubt disturbs his conviction that 
he and his compeers and their world and its 
interests are the most important people and things 
in the universe of created being. 



26 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

Like the Schoolmaster, the Don is keen, or, 
as he would prefer to say, strenuous. The old- 
fashioned type of Don, who was supposed to loll 
in Olympian ease, surrounded by luxuries, and 
remote from the cares and strifes of men, has 
ceased to exist. Indeed, there is reason to suppose 
that he never had a real existence, but was merely 
an idea or concept of what a Don might be, formed 
by those who would have liked to be Dons but 
had failed of their desires. " He has all the 
worst instincts of a Don, without the requisite 
ability," was harshly said of a rather unnecessarily 
dignified M.A. who went on residing in Oxford, 
no one exactly knew why. 

Then again the Don who ensued culture, who 
gathered fritillaries in the meadows, and nailed 
blue-and-white plates to his wall, and drank hock 
out of Bohemian glasses, has perished. He was 
killed by "Patience," and, though the opera may 
be revived, the central character is no longer 
recognizable in academic circles. The Don of 
the present day is even painfully strenuous, 
alert, vigorous, and active. If he has been an 
athlete in his undergraduate days, he excites him- 
self over his college boat or cricket-team, makes 
patriotic speeches at bump-suppers, and tries to 
buy a precarious popularity by asking Blues to 
dinner. If he is more a man of mind than of 
muscle, he lives in and for his pupils. If you 
go to see him in his rooms, an awkward-looking 
youth in slippers and spectacles is established in 



THE OXFORD DON 27 

the best armchair ; and if you ask him to dine 
with you at seven, he rushes off at 8.30 because 
he has got " men coming." Perhaps he is political, 
and then he is offensively Imperialist; plays at 
being a volunteer, is deep in academical caucuses, 
and circulates manifestoes which, as Lord Beacons- 
field once said of similar productions, produce 
really less effect than chalking the walls. 

The Social Don is a clearly-marked and curious 
type, more modest perhaps, but in his quiet way 
not less strenuous, than his athletic or tuitional 
colleague. " Commemoration " draws him out into 
the garish day. You may see him dancing quadrilles 
in a Masonic apron, or even (if he has ceased to 
be a Don and is now a Bishop) whirling in a waltz, 
with his pectoral cross bobbing up and down on 
his purple bosom. All through the academical 
year he delights in the respectable dissipations of 
Norham Gardens and the Banbury Road, and in 
his vacations is often to be found diffusing culture 
at the tea-tables of Tyburnia and South Kensington. 

The same strenuousness animates all the Don's 
intellectual pursuits. Whichever way his intellect 
tends, he follows that way with immense earnest- 
ness. If he is a "Greats man," he believes with 
all his heart and soul that he is above the possibility 
of contradiction. The attitude of the Metaphysical 
Don to the mere man of Theology or History 
closely resembles that of Mr. Squeers to the en- 
quiring parent : — 

" Philosophy's the chap for me. If a parent asks 



28 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

a question in the classical, commercial, or mathe- 
matical line, says I gravely, 'Why, sir, in the 
first place, are you a philosopher ? ' " No, Mr. 
Squeers/ he says, * I ain't.' < Then, sir/ says 
I, ' I am sorry for you, for I shan't be able to 
explain it.' Naturally the parent goes away and 
wishes he was a philosopher, and, equally naturally, 
thinks I'm one." 

This haughty attitude of the Metaphysical Don 
is apt to cow his brother Don, the man of 
Codices or Charters, who has just discovered in 
the Bodleian a tavern-bill of the last Nonjuring 
Bishop, or is "chewing the cud of erudite mis- 
take about Cush and Misraim." But the Historical 
Don or the Theological Don is resolved that his 
own line of research shall not be lightly esteemed, 
and he in turn avenges himself on the Scientific 
Don. Nothing is more remarkable in modern 
Oxford than the modest bearing of Physical 
Science when confronted with the arrogance of 
unproveable philosophies. 

And then, again, the modern Don brings his 
strenuousness into the sphere of Religion. The 
placid Agnosticism of a calmer day has yielded 
on one side to a passionate negation, on another 
to an eager and polemical pietism. Only last 
week I heard a pathetic reproach levelled at a 
newly-elected Don : " He is a sharp fellow, but 
an aggressive Christian." The words gave food 
for thought. Thirty years ago the aggressiveness 
of Oxford was of a different type. In those days 



THE OXFORD DON 29 

Matthew Arnold wrote : — " With Swinburne the 
favourite poet of the young men at Oxford and 
Cambridge, and Huxley pounding away at the 
intelligent working-man, there is indeed much 
necessity for methods of insight and moderation." 
The methods of insight and moderation had their 
day. Every one became candid and liberal and 
tolerant. Sacerdotalists played at textual criticism 
and flirted with physical science. Every one pro- 
fessed to see a great deal of good in every one 
else's theory, and nobody seemed to think that 
anything in heaven or earth was worth the trouble 
of a fight. But all this is changed. Strenuous- 
ness is again in fashion. The Sceptical Don, and 
the Critical Don, and the Negative Don all have 
had their fling and put their best energies into 
their propaganda ; while the adherents of the 
ancient faith-marks evince at least equal vigour. 
They no longer butter their opponents, or give 
credit for good motives, or attempt to arrive at 
truth by professing diametrically opposite opinions 
on each contested point. Nowadays academical 
people, to whatever camp they belong, hold their 
opinions tenaciously, proclaim them insistently, 
and denounce their opponents as either intellectu- 
ally or morally deficient. "They could not say 
I was a fool," said Mandell Creighton, "so they 
said I must be a knave." To that happy temper 
of mind Oxford seems to have returned. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE OXFORD UNDERGRADUATE 

I wonder if my accomplished friend Mr. Walter 
Sichel remembers, amid his sterner labours in 
history and biography, that free rendering of the 
famous iroXka ra heiva with which in his impetuous 
youth he charmed his schoolfellows at Harrow. 
One strophe may aptly serve as the motto of our 
present study — 

" Our universe is strange ; 

Nought in it more so than the Undergraduate. 
He knows by varied art to change 

The hoary Don's unflinching hate ; 
With mild, persuasive commonplace 
He thaws full soon the wintriest face." 

My avocations have lately led me much into the 
society of Oxford undergraduates, and I find that 
in all essential respects they are pretty much what 
they were thirty years ago. Almost all the old 
classifications hold good. There is the Reading 
Man ; by which I mean the man who reads seriously 
and with a set purpose, who grinds hard for several 
hours a day, secures his First in Mods and his 

First in Greats, perhaps a University prize or 

30 



THE OXFORD UNDERGRADUATE 31 

scholarship, and eventually becomes a Fellow of 
his College. He is exactly what he was in my 
youth — a little monotonous and uninteresting, but 
admirable, exemplary, and worthy of observation, 
because ten years hence he will be one of those 
who are shaping the character and mind of the 
University. Next in importance, and easily first 
in prominence and popularity, is the Athletic 
Undergraduate — the man of muscle and sinew, 
the " Blue " triply crowned with fame, or the 
milder " Half-Blue," with his pale glories of 
cycling or lawn-tennis. " Have you ever seen Bill 
Sikes stripped ? " loudly demanded an admiring 
understudy when the physical excellences of a 
great athlete were extolled. " Seen him stripped ? " 
replied his friend. " Why, of course I have. I've 
seen him rowing often enough." "Ah, but I 
mean really stripped — without a rag on him. He 
had the rooms next mine, and I tell you he's a 
picture." 

The Sporting Undergraduate, the man who hunts 
and plays polo and shoots at Bagley or Wytham, 
is perhaps as prominent as the athlete, but he is 
distinctly less popular. Ostlers glory in his polo- 
ponies and flymen point him out to their admiring 
fares. But the ordinary undergraduate has no 
pleasure in the strength of a horse. His delight 
is in human backs and thighs, and thews and 
sinews, and I think I can detect a wholesome 
notion lurking in the recesses of his mind that 
an undergraduate ought to take his pastime in 



32 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

pursuits which all undergraduates can share. A 
rich man ought not to flaunt his riches. 

Then there is the Social Undergraduate, and of 
him there are two species. There is the com- 
paratively humble sort, the drab moth of the 
social world, who takes his pleasure at the tea- 
tables of the married dons and cultivates the 
society of the " residential " population which has 
lately spread itself over the district towards Sum- 
mertown. He instructs the daughters of the local 
clergy in the art of sculling, and endangers the 
life of his tutor's wife in a punt on the Cherwell. 
The more vivid species of social butterfly — the 
" Purple Emperor," who motors over to luncheon 
at Nuneham or " dines at Blenheim twice a week," 
— is still found as of yore in the richest abundance 
at Christ Church ; but Magdalen and New College 
know him also, and it may be that Balliol still 
treasures the great tradition that to toady a young 
aristocrat is not snobbery but patriotism, inasmuch 
as he will one day exercise an influence on our 
national life. A member of the Conservative 
Government was once at great pains to explain 
why he and his friend Lord Curzon had not done 
as well in the Schools as Mr. Asquith and Lord 
Milner. He dismissed all base suggestions of in- 
tellectual inferiority and explained it thus : " You 
see we were the eldest sons of peers, and we were 
so much asked out in the County that it interfered 
with our reading." 

In my time it would have been inevitable in 



THE OXFORD UNDERGRADUATE 33 

connexion with the Social Undergraduate to cite 
the Dressy Undergraduate. He wore beautiful 
suits and patent-leather boots. Till mid-day on 
Sunday (and, if he was a Ritualist, on Ascension 
Day) he wore a frock-coat and a silk hat. If he 
was an aesthete, he wore ties of strange, sad colours 
— brickdust-red and peacock-blue and sage-green. 
If he was rich, he kept a valet and had varnished 
boots and a good deal of jewellery. In the darkest 
secrecy let it be recorded that I have seen stays 
round an undergraduate's waist. But all these 
things have vanished like last year's snows. Mr. 
Gladstone said, after his last visit to Oxford, that 
he had not seen a single undergraduate whom 
he could not have dressed from top to toe for 
£5. To-day the necessary outlay would be very 
far less. I relate what I lately saw — an under- 
graduate in a coloured shirt and Norfolk jacket 
and bedroom slippers, with his head bare and 
his gown tied round his neck, going to lecture 
on a bicycle. Comment, as they say, is super- 
fluous. 

I hardly know where I ought to place the 
Political Undergraduate. He represents a cross- 
classification. He may be a reading man or a 
social man, conceivably a sportsman, but not an 
athlete — unless, indeed, in those glorious moments 
of exuberance when the athlete generously offers 
to smash the skull of a blooming Radical. But 

c 



34 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

this is not serious politics, and the Political 
Undergraduate is as serious as a Don. He pre- 
pares his speeches for the " Pam " or the Canning 
with scrupulous care. He aspires to the presi- 
dency of the Union, and is never so happy as 
when he can get Mr. Taper, M.P., or Lord Decimus 
Tite-Barnacle to come down and make a speech 
on the question of the moment. As I write there 
recurs to memory a quaint scene which occurred 
in the Corn Exchange of Oxford in January 1878. 
Mr. Gladstone was receiving an address from the 
local Liberal Association, and an intensely political 
undergraduate of Tory principles, who had secreted 
himself under the gallery, just as Mr. Gladstone 
rose to speak emitted a feeble hiss. A Radical 
workman turned upon the interrupter with a harsh 
admonition. "Look 'ere, you in the yaller coat. 
If you can't be'ave yourself I'll 'ave you out in 
two twos." The political undergraduate subsided 
into quiescence, murmuring in a pensive under- 
tone, "The mob ought to be shot down, but till 
they are I shall hold my tongue." 

The Religious Undergraduate shall have no 
ridicule from me, for a disciple of Matthew Arnold 
recognizes that for undergraduates religion is, as it 
is for the rest of us, the most beautiful and the 
most beneficent thing in the world. In spite of all 
that has come and gone, Oxford is still religious. 
The root of the matter is still there, even as it was 



THE OXFORD UNDERGRADUATE 35 

in the old times before us, ere yet "the Palmer- 
worm" (as Dr. Liddon called Lord Selborne's 
Commission) had eaten up what the locusts of 
the earlier Commission had left, in the way of 
academical ecclesiasticism. And while the sub- 
stance is the same, even the forms of the under- 
graduate's religion have varied very little in thirty 
years. If he is Evangelical, he still preaches or is 
preached to at the Martyrs' Memorial. If he is a 
Ritualist, his due feet never fail to carry him to High 
Mass at St. Barnabas's. True it is that some subtle 
refinements have of late years appeared. The in- 
tellectual Christian flirts with the Higher Criticism 
at the Pusey House, and the rigid adherent of 
" Prayer-book religion " as taught by Mr. Percy 
Dearmer finds his soul satisfied at SS. Philip and 
James. But in the main the religion of Oxford is 
what it was, and gains from its exquisite surround- 
ings there a charm and a persuasiveness which else- 
where it sometimes lacks. 

And now, in conclusion, a word about the Model 
Undergraduate. He is, as he always was, the best 
of all good fellows, and the pleasantest company 
in the world. He neither reads nor rows too hard. 
He "smatters," as Hudibras would say, Greek 
philosophy or Latin literature, German ballads 
or French plays. Perhaps he sings, perhaps he 
plays the piano ; very likely he rides and will lend a 
horse to a friend. If he plays Bridge, he neither 



36 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

craves to win nor picks a quarrel if he loses. He 
is gentle and clean-living, merry, sympathetic, and 
appreciative. He takes his full share of pleasure 
in "this world of opportunity and wonder," but 
never forgets that the truest joys are those of 
intellect and spirit. In three words, he is a " Typi- 
cal Oxford Man," and that, as Mr. Gladstone 
said, is the highest praise which it is possible 
to bestow. 



CHAPTER V 

THE B.A. 

Of Lady Beaconsfield her distinguished husband 
once observed, u She is an excellent creature, but 
she never can remember which came first, the 
Greeks or the Romans." When I, review the 
order in which these slight Sketches have been 
produced, I feel that a hostile critic might condemn 
me as similarly lacking the chronological sense. 
I have discussed in a rather irregular sequence 
Schoolmasters and Dons of various types, and 
Schoolboys and Undergraduates as these have 
fashioned them. Broadly speaking, I have dealt 
with English Education, its principles, methods, 
and subjects. Now let us say a word about its 
products. Let the B.A. stand as the type, and let 
us trace his mental history. His earliest years 
were spent, with his sisters, under the care of an 
expensive governess — none of your old-fashioned 
ladies nurtured on Mrs. Markham or Miss Mangnall, 
but rather a Cornelia Blimber who has graduated 
from Newnham, or a Miss Wirt brought up to date. 
"'The modern languages,' said Miss Wirt modestly, 
1 French, German, Spanish, and Italian, Latin and 
the rudiments of Greek if desired — English of 

37 



38 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

course ; the practice of Elocution, Geography and 
Astronomy and the Use of the Globes, Algebra 
(but only as far as quadratic equations), Ancient 
and Modern History no one can be without ; 
Botany, Geology, and Mineralogy I consider as 
amusements.' " Lady Lyttelton, who was governess 
to Queen Victoria's eldest children, declared that 
when the present King was taken from her mild 
sway and placed under tutors and governors he 
never passed the door of his sisters' schoolroom 
without softly murmuring, " Ah, those happy days !" 
Let us hope that a similar ejaculation bursts from 
the lips of our typical boy when, at the age of nine 
or ten, he is torn from Miss Wirt's care and pitch- 
forked into the Private School. There, at an 
annual charge of two hundred pounds (the only 
extras being, as at Vivian Grey's academy, "Pure 
Milk and the Guitar "), he remains till he has struck 
thirteen, and then the Public School receives him, 
and, unless something untoward occurs, retains 
him till he is eighteen or nineteen — perhaps, 
if he is a good cricketer and the Head Master 
wishes to curry favour with the athletic world, till 
he is on the verge of twenty. 

" Schools, unless discipline were doubly strong, 
Detain their adolescent charge too long. 
The stout, tall captain, whose superior size 
The minor heroes view with envious eyes, 
Becomes their pattern, upon whom they fix 
Their whole attention, and ape all his tricks." 

The "stout, tall captain," when decency forbids 



THE B.A. 39 

to class him any longer as a boy, makes his way 
to Oxford or Cambridge, and, to his infinite ad- 
vantage, finds himself, for a season, nothing and 
nobody. He may presently emerge again into 
athletic fame, or there may be a going softly all 
his academical days, which is of better augury 
for his success, and even more conspicuously for 
his agreeableness, in after-life. If he happens to 
have been born with a genuine interest in \ the 
things of the intellect and the spirit, of course 
the University stimulates and disciplines that 
interest; but the majority of undergraduates are 
born without it, and on them the University 
produces only a social effect. Intellectual effect 
it has none. u Oxford and Cambridge," wrote 
Matthew Arnold, "are hauts lycees ; and, though 
invaluable in their way as places where the youth 
of the upper class prolong to a very great age, 
and under some very admirable influences, their 
school education, they are still, in fact, schools^ and 
do not carry education beyond the stage of general 
and school education. The examination for the 
degree of Bachelor of Arts, which we place at 
the end of our three years' University course, is 
merely the Abiturientenexamen of Germany, the 
epreuve du baccalaureat of France, placed in both 
those countries at the entrance to University 
studies, instead of, as with us, at their close." 

The same keen critic of our educational system 
had, we know, two contemporaries at Oxford who 
became respectively Lord Lumpington and the 



4 o SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

Rev. Esau Hittall. Both had been trained in the 
" grand old fortifying classical curriculum " of our 
Public Schools ; both had been submitted to the 
discipline of Greek and Latin, not for the sake of 
anything contained in Greek or Latin literature, 
but in order that they might be braced by the 
" Mental Gymnastics " of classical education. 
" Were the minds of Lord Lumpington and Mr. 
Hittall much braced by their mental gymnastics ? " 
asked the carping foreigner. " Well/' replied Mr. 
Arnold, " during their three years at Oxford they 
were so much occupied with Ballingdon and 
hunting that there was no great opportunity to 
judge. But, for my own part, I have always 
thought that their both getting their degree at 
last with flying colours, after three weeks of a 
famous coach for fast men, four nights without 
going to bed, and an incredible consumption of 
wet towels, strong cigars, and brandy-and-water, 
was one of the most astonishing feats of mental 
gymnastics I ever heard of." 

And now our "Youth of the Upper Class," 
following in the path hallowed by the steps of 
Lumpington and Hittall, and having "prolonged 
to a very great age" his school-education, is 
twenty-three and a B.A. The blissful period in 
which he could justify his existence by merely 
being a delightful companion is over. Now he 
has to face the awful necessity of doing something, 
or at least of pretending to do it. The world is all 
before him where to choose, unless he happens to 



THE B.A. 41 

be the eldest son of a rich man, and then his 
path is chosen for him. A great deal of sport 
and an equal amount of society, with a little 
dabbling in Politics or County Council thrown 
in, will amply suffice to occupy the years which 
must elapse before he comes into the paternal 
kingdom. 

We cannot all be Eldest Sons in any technical 
or satisfactory sense — although I remember a 
callow youth at Oxford who said, with some 
dignity, u You fellows are younger sons ; I am an 
eldest son." And so indeed he was, for he was the 
eldest of fourteen, and his father was a Perpetual 
Curate in Northumberland. It is only too true 
that there are a good many younger sons in the 
world— "The Little Brothers of the Rich," as 
some one called them, — a body quite as deserving 
as the Little Sisters of the Poor, and much more 
numerous. And even supposing that the Younger 
Son has what is called a modest competence, social 
prejudices require that he should profess to do 
something. So he eats his dinners at the Temple, 
or goes for a voyage round the world, or plays a 
little with some of those lighter forms of literature 
which are at once less exhausting than work, and 
more respectable than idleness. But for a large 
proportion of men who have taken their B.A., 
there always is the odious necessity of not only 
pretending to work but of actually working, and 
working in a way which will procure, if not actually 
their daily bread, certainly the butter and the jam 



42 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

which Oxford or Cambridge has taught them to 
appreciate. 

In this dire strait what is our B.A. to do ? It is 
too late for the Army. There is no visible opening 
in commerce. The Bar is overstocked. He is too 
honest a fellow to seek Holy Orders without voca- 
tion. His modest pass-degree will not qualify him 
even to succeed Mr. Feeder, B.A., as classical 
assistant to Dr. Blimber. If he goes to a " Mud- 
School," lured by the distant prospect of a land- 
agency, he will have to pay, and it is necessary for 
him to be paid. Even electrical engineering must 
be taught, and farming in Manitoba requires 
capital. Literature, indeed, is, as we are told, a 
Republic, and Journalism presents an Open Door. 
But the citizens of the Republic are not always 
hospitable to strangers, and the open door has an 
awkward knack of banging back in one's face. 
Alas ! poor B.A. Have twenty years of the most 
expensive education in the world brought you to 
this pass ? 



CHAPTER VI 

THE CANDIDATE FOR ORDERS 

When I am pitying the unhappy plight of the 
Indeterminate B.A., I have in mind the case, by 
no means imaginary, of the man, not very well off 
yet not absolutely penniless, who goes up to the 
University with the vague expectation that he will 
there discover something to do with his life, and, 
after three or four years of strenuous idleness, finds 
himself still at a loose end ; perhaps with some 
of his money spent, certainly with a good many 
expensive tastes acquired, and probably with a 
confirmed distaste for what he calls " drudgery " 
and humbler mortals call work. The case is really 
rather pathetic, and the prospect gloomy unless 
the opportune "girl with a bit of money" turns 
up, and then all may still be well. So we will not 
reason further of the Indeterminate B.A., but will 
pass on to the more usual case of the sensible youth 
who, as soon as he goes up to the University or 
even sooner, lays down his ground-plan of life (or 
acquiesces in that laid down by his parents), and 
becomes a student of Lincoln's Inn, or attends the 
Regius Professor's Lectures on the Sixth Nerve, 
or subjects himself to the austere discipline of 

43 



44 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

"Wren's" with a view to administering our Indian 
Empire. 

The first of these three species developes into the 
Barrister about the time that he takes his degree ; 
and the Barrister, actual or incipient, I am inclined 
to leave alone. The type is too well known to 
need further illustration. It is extraordinarily free 
from variation, and remains exactly what it was 
in those distant days when Mr. Fitzroy Timmins, 
of the Northern Circuit ("an Oxford man and 
very polite "), gave the famous " Little Dinner " 
in Lilliput Street. Of the newer type of Doctor 
I shall have something to say later on, for in 
that instance the variation is so remarkable as 
to demand separate treatment. The Indian Civil 
Servant swims out of my ken as soon as he has 
passed his examination, and does not return into 
it until he is jaundiced and uninteresting. Thus 
three main types of Determinate B.A. are for the 
present disposed of, and I am free to concentrate 
my attention on one with which I am peculiarly 
familiar. " I had no idea that you were such an 
expert in clerical zoology," said Lord Beaconsfield 
to Dean Wellesley ; and I might make some 
humble claims to original research in the same vast 
and interesting field. 

The B.A. who means to take Holy Orders is the 
subject of my present meditations, and here the 
variation which the years have brought is remark- 
able indeed. We may presume that all fiction 
which deals with its own time is more or less a 



THE CANDIDATE FOR ORDERS 45 

reflection of character and conduct as actually ex- 
isting at that time ; and, if this be so, the types of 
young men intending to take Holy Orders which 
were drawn by Charles Kingsley and F. E. Paget 
and Dr. Farrar must have had some relation to the 
actual life of the world. Kingsley in u Alton Locke " 
made his characters live in the years of Revolu- 
tion 1845-8. He knew very well what Cambridge 
was, what undergraduates were, and what sort of 
clergymen they made. He prided himself on the 
fidelity with which he drew from life, and the 
result is George Locke, Alton's cousin, who is 
represented as an honest fellow enough, though a 
little unawakened, and this is the way in which he 
discourses of his intended profession : — 

" It isn't one out of ten who's ever entered a 
school, or a cottage even except to light a cigar, 
before he goes into the church ; and as for the 
examination, that's all humbug ; any man can cram 
it all up in a month, and, thanks to King's College, 
I knew all I wanted to know before I went to 
Cambridge. And I shall be three-and-twenty by 
Trinity Sunday, and then in I go, neck or nothing. 
Only the confounded bore is that this Bishop of 
London won't give one a title — won't let any man 
into his diocese — who has not been ordained two 
years ; and so I shall be shoved down into some 
pokey little country curacy, without a chance of 
making play before the world, or getting myself 
known at all. Horrid bore, isn't it ? " 

As Kingsley knew Cambridge, so Paget knew 



46 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

Oxford. He was, if not exactly the Sweet Singer, 
at least the Humorous Novelist, of the Tractarian 
Movement. "The Owlet" was published in 1857, 
and Silvanus Urban presumably represents the 
type of character which necessitated the crea- 
tion of Cuddesden College as a place of pro- 
bation between Oxford and Ordination. Urban 
looked forward to being ordained and married 
about the same time. He had a comfortable 
fortune, so he instructed his solicitor to buy him 
the Next Presentation to some "good living, with 
a small population, in a hunting country." He 
designed to wed Lady Selina St. Blazey, daughter 
of Lord and Lady Eddystone ; but the Trinity 
Ordination occurred, as such things will do, at the 
very height of the London season, and an addi- 
tional hardship was that the Bishop of Bumble- 
dom, instead of ordaining at St. James's, Piccadilly, 
or St. George's, Hanover Square, "must needs 
bring all the candidates down to Bumbledom 
Castle and exercise his horrid hospitality there ; 
and this just the very week of Lady DafTadown's 
breakfast at Richmond and of the Bazaar on 
behalf of Unprotected Females, at which Lady 
Eddystone was to have a stall." However, there 
fortunately was a Fancy Ball at Dorsetshire House 
on the Monday after the ordination, so that Urban 
got off by the express train, and reached London 
in time for the Fancy Ball, where he threw himself 
and his Next Presentation to Snugstead Flory at 
Lady Selina's feet. 



THE CANDIDATE FOR ORDERS 47 

In "Julian Home/' which belongs to the same 
period as "The Owlet," we return to Cambridge, 
and here an even more amazing picture of the 
Candidate for Orders is offered to our view. Dr. 
Farrar had, as we all know, his own heightened 
and coloured way of putting things, but his fiction 
was invariably founded on fact, and he was pro- 
bably describing what he had seen when he drew 
the hideous character of the backsliding Puritan 
Hazlet, who professes to regard the sordid de- 
bauchery of Barnwall as a suitable preparation 
for Holy Orders. u It takes a great deal to abash 
a mind like Hazlet's. He said that he was going 
to be a clergyman, and that it was necessary for 
him to see something of life, or he would never 
acquire the requisite experience." 

After so loathsome a touch as that, it is a relief 
to turn to the measured and dignified sarcasm 
of Dr. Vaughan, who, preaching in 1869, aimed 
a shaft at " men who choose the ministry because 
there is a family-living waiting for them, or because 
they think they can make that profession — that 
and no other — compatible with indolence and 
self-indulgence ; or because they imagine that a 
scantier talent and a more idle use of it can in 
that one calling be made to suffice." Something 
at least of the same tendency as that which the 
great Cambridge preacher then condemned must 
have been present also in the Oxford of the 'sixties, 
when Dr. Liddon said to his undergraduate hearers 
at St. Mary's : " Does the text bid you seek Holy 



48 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

Orders ? That question must be answered by 
every man in the sanctuary of his own soul. Alas 
for those who press to the steps of the sanctuary 
only that they may keep a Fellowship or please a 
parent ! Alas for those who bring to the service 
of the altar a sceptical intellect or an impure heart ! 
These must earn for the Church of God a sure 
legacy of confusion and weakness, and for them- 
selves, too probably, a forfeiture of endless peace." 

All these extracts — and they might be indefinitely 
extended — point unmistakably to the existence 
fifty or even forty years ago of a type of candi- 
date for Holy Orders which has utterly dis- 
appeared. I should doubt if there is a single 
man now preparing himself for the clerical career 
who regards the Christian Ministry as simply a 
profession. If he exists, he lies very low, and, 
for shame's sake if for no worthier motive, simu- 
lates an ardour which he does not feel. 

The influences which have so profoundly modi- 
fied this type, and the results in which they have 
issued, I discuss in another chapter. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE CURATE 

"A Curate "—wrote Sydney Smith in 1822 — 
" there is something which excites compassion in 
the very name of a Curate ! A learned man in a 
hovel, with sermons and saucepans, lexicons and 
bacon, Hebrew books and ragged children ; good 
and patient ; a comforter and a preacher ; the first 
and purest pauper of the hamlet." 

When I was drawing the Candidate for 
Orders as he was half a century ago, I was con- 
trasting him with the modern type. Here is 
another study in contrasts. Could anything be 
more curiously unlike the modern Curate than the 
character described under that designation by 
Sydney Smith ? Let us take it point by point. 
" There is something which excites compassion 
in the very name of a Curate." One must be 
tender-hearted indeed — even morbidly so — if 
one were moved to compassionate the modern 
Curate. He is almost offensively prosperous — 
young, strong, healthy, active, boisterously cheer- 
ful, aggressively u breezy." His very appearance 
checks the stream of compassion at its source. 
One cannot pity a fellow-creature who looks so 

49 D 



50 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

well pleased with himself and his world. And here 
let it be noted that the expert in clerical zoology 
has long seen that the Curate is developing into a 
type recognizable by the eye. He no longer looks 
like a Wesleyan minister, a Roman Seminarist, a 
juvenile butler, or a cavalry officer. He is a smart, 
clean, well-set-up youth, with face closely shaved 
and hair cut short. He no longer wears, except on 
occasions of state, a decayed "topper" and a long 
coat with buttons as numerous as the Articles of 
the Church of England. In his daily avocation he 
wears a short, round jacket, a silver watch-chain 
crossing his waistcoat, dark trousers turned up at 
the bottoms, serviceable shooting-boots, and a black 
straw hat. He has an air, indescribable but un- 
mistakable, of having lived an out-of-door life, and, 
even though his present lot be cast in a slum, he 
looks as if he only required a few weeks' training 
to regain the physical trim in which he left Oxford 
or Cambridge. 

Here again is a contrast more recent than that 
drawn from Sydney Smith's description. Thirty 
years ago an all-too-graphic writer in the Daily 
Telegraph said of the High Church Curate : "We 
are accustomed to think of such as a rather limp 
individual, tender-eyed as Leah, with a falsetto 
voice perpetually monotoning on G, strongly ascetic, 
and severe on all the pomps and vanities of this 
wicked world." If the writer of that curious 
sentence is still alive, I should like to introduce 
him to some curates of my acquaintance. Two or 



THE CURATE 51 

three years ago a strapping youth, fresh from the 
glories of the " Rugger " Team at Oxford, found 
himself curate in a populous parish. His district 
lay in an artisans' quarter, where he soon made 
himself much at home ; but he soon perceived that 
the working men, though kind, were a little con- 
temptuous, apparently (like the writer in the Daily 
Telegraph) regarding a curate as something less than 
a man. Nettled by this condescending tone, and 
hearing that there was a "Rugger" Club in the 
parish, the Curate casually enquired whether the 
club would play a Team of Parsons. The local 
athletes cheerfully replied that it would be a little 
holiday to them — they would do it on their heads. 
The fateful fixture was, therefore, appointed ; and 
on the given day the Curate appeared at the head 
of a team composed of Internationals, Blues, and 
men who had played for their colleges. The fight 
began in good earnest. Each team was on its 
mettle, animated by professional pride. When 
a curate was collared, humorous cries of 
" Break his neck, and then he won't be able 
to preach on Sunday ! " were raised by the 
local supporters ; but the tune was soon changed. 
The curates, many of whom had never met 
before, were now playing into one another's 
hands, and presently were chivying the artisans 
round and round the ground, amid the lurid 
ejaculations of the mob. The match ended in a 
victory, almost too one-sided to be sportsman- 
like, for the Cloth, and from that day forward 



52 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

the working men of Upper Peddlington have re- 
spected the Church as they never respected it 
before. 

But from this digression we must return to 
Sydney Smith's description of the Curate. "A 
learned man in a hovel, with sermons and sauce- 
pans, lexicons and bacon, Hebrew books and 
ragged children." Here the contrast between 
ancient and modern types is not so wholly 
favourable to the modern. "A learned man." 
Will my athletic young friends permit me to 
suggest that very few indeed of their number are 
entitled to the praise of learning, and that not 
many of them have even that smattering acquaint- 
ance with books and culture which used to be 
thought inseparable from a University training ? 
The learned men who take Holy Orders gene- 
rally find their way into academical or quasi- 
academical positions. They get Clerical Fellow- 
ships, or they become lecturers at Theological 
Colleges or assistants at the Pusey House. Per- 
haps they attach themselves to Bishops or Deans, 
or flirt with some form of subdued monasticism. 
They do not become curates. The Curate — and 
of course I am speaking of the type, not of the 
individual — the Curate knows nothing. The annals 
of Henley lie pat to his tongue, and he is deep 
in the lore of inter-University competitions. He 
is steeped in the traditions of W. G. Grace, and 
says his prayers before a photograph of C. B. Fry. 
But there his general knowledge ends; and as to 



THE CURATE 53 

his special and professional knowledge, it would be 
impertinent for a layman to enquire too closely. 
In brief, the modern Curate is not a learned man, 
and he does not live in a "hovel," but in a cosy 
room furnished with armchairs and walled with 
photographs of athletic teams and Ritualistic 
churches. " Sermons and saucepans " were enum- 
erated by Sydney Smith among the Curate's simple 
furnishings. Sermons belong to all time, but the 
modern Curate scorns a manuscript, so the evi- 
dences of his toil are not visible; and saucepans 
are replaced in his case by tobacco-jars. " Lexi- 
cons and bacon, Hebrew books and ragged 
children." The modern Curate likes his morning 
rasher as well as another; he earns it honestly, 
and relishes it keenly. For lexicons he has little 
use, and as to Hebrew books, they would be about 
as serviceable to him as his bats and bicycles 
would have been to his forerunner. 

But it is when we come to " ragged children " 
that the height of incongruity is reached. It is 
strange indeed to think of a time when to be sur- 
rounded by " ragged children " was a characteristic 
mark or note of the British Curate. The modern 
Curate is not married. He is by no means a vowed 
celibate ; he is sustained amid the arduous labours 
of Confirmation-classes and school-excursions, 
choir-practices and parochial gatherings by the 
proud ambition of some day having a parish of 
his own, a wife, and £250 a year. On this 
modest income he eventually marries, and the 



54 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

result is that melancholy poverty of the Estab- 
lished Clergy which is the chief blot on the 
scutcheon of the Church of England. But as 
long as he is a curate he remains unmarried. 
The District Visitor or the President of the 
Girls' Club has, indeed, long since marked him 
for her own ; but at present he knows not her 
fell design, and, heedless of his doom, the little 
victim plays. 

Perhaps he inhabits an upper chamber in a 
Gothic Clergy-house ; perhaps he has " digs " (as 
he would have called them at Oxford) in a neat 
brick house in a jerry-built row. He does not, as 
a rule, seek his sphere of work in the u hamlet" 
where Sydney Smith's Curate exhibited his virtues. 
The best curates tend steadily and increasingly to 
the large towns. But, whatever be his dwelling, he 
lives in it a free, jovial, and independent life. He 
works extremely hard, and plays not less strenu- 
ously on the proper occasion. He is not much 
of an orator, but delivers good common-sense 
and sound theology from the pulpit. He has no 
finikin love of ceremonial minutiae, but enjoys 
the dignified and intelligible worship with which 
the English Church surrounds the altar. He is 
indefatigable in visiting the old and sick ; friendly 
with the able-bodied ; gentle and playful with the 
" kids " in the school ; and the leading spirit in any 
harmless recreation which may be going forward 
in the parish. At night, when the day's work is 
done and he is sharing with his brother-curate the 



THE CURATE 55 

mild delights of pipes and cocoa, he finds an en- 
joyment not lightly to be esteemed in criticizing 
his vicar, to whom, however, he is genuinely 
loyal. He is, in fine, a characteristic product 
of the English Public School and University, 
with a top-dressing of Cuddesdon or Ely ; and, 
though other churches may boast a more learned 
or a more ascetic clergy, Christendom does not 
contain a more thoroughly good fellow than the 
British Curate. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE COUNTRY PARSON 

When Wilkins Micawber, of impecunious but 
delightful memory, proposed to serve Mr. Uriah 
Heep, attorney- at-law, in the capacity of con- 
fidential clerk, he thus summarized his professional 
qualifications : " I have already some acquaintance 
with the Law, as a defendant on civil process, 
and I shall immediately apply myself to the Com- 
mentaries of one of the most eminent and re- 
markable of our English jurists. I believe it is 
unnecessary to add that I allude to Mr. Justice 
Blackstone." 

If Mr. Micawber's studies carried him so far 
as part ii. of Book IV. he may perhaps have 
noticed the following dissertation on the proper 
title of the Parish Priest : a The Rector (or 
Governor) of a church is properly called l a 
parson^— persona ecclesice. That is, one that hath 
full possession of all the rights of a parochial 
church. He is called ' parson ' because by his 
person the Church, which is an invisible body, 
is represented ; and this appellation (however it 
may be depreciated by familiar, clownish, and 

indiscriminate use) is the most legal, most bene- 

56 



THE COUNTRY PARSON 57 

ficial, and most honourable title which a parish 
priest can enjoy." Fortified by this high authority, 
I propose to discuss the Beneficed Clergy under 
the head of " Parsons." Later on I shall have 
something to say, Chaucer- wise, about the "pore 
Persoun of a toun " ; but now I am concerned 
with another Chaucerian creation — the "pore 
Persoun dwellyng uppon land," the "Country 
Parson" of George Herbert's fancy, the "Country 
Clergyman " of more modern parlance. 

Forty years ago, when agricultural prices were 
still high and glebes paid well, a country clergy- 
man — the famous " S. G. O." 1 — thus described his 
brother-clerics. He is picturing an ecclesiastical 
procession in the very early days of Ritualism, 
and his picture has a terrible verisimilitude : — 

" The clergy never size well ; it is evident on 
the face of the thing that they are not up in this 
sort of work. As they pass, do the lookers-on 
feel as men would feel who beheld their priests 
engaged in some solemn religious demonstration ? 
Are they so many Spiritual Fathers, the confessors 
and directors of the people ? . . . No ; they are 
for the most part recognised in a very different 
way — owners of pony-traps, or even, perhaps, a 
brougham ; the fortunate possessors of glebes ; 
heads of families ; the lesser powers of country 
parishes ; So-and-so, lately married ; this one 
said to be about to marry So-and-so's daughter, 
or lately refused by her ; there is one great as 

1 The Rev. Lord Sydney Godolphin Osborne (1808- 1889). 



58 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

a farmer, another famous as an antiquary, the 
man who gives such long prices for old oak chairs. 
Then there goes the man who wins prizes for 
flowers, walking with another who is great on 
the subject of bees. Then there is the man who 
will never let the farmers alone, and that other 
who, all thought, would be the next Archdeacon — 
and so on to the last curate. The men are only 
clergymen after all, doing a kind of holiday 
demonstration ; excellent fellows, most of them, 
with their families making a great part of the 
staple of the pleasant social life of their respec- 
tive localities, and, as such, more or less re- 
spected." 

This is, if not exactly a poetical, at least a com- 
fortable, idyll of clerical life in rural districts — the 
clergyman mixing freely in local society ; farming 
his own glebe, or letting it at a satisfactory rent ; 
driving his own pony-trap, rich enough to give 
long prices for curiosities, leisured enough to spend 
time on bee-keeping — altogether a prosperous, 
popular, and easy-goingjman. 

But, in the forty years which have elapsed since 
"S. G. O." described the clerical procession, the 
conditions of clerical life in the country have been 
completely revolutionized — in one direction con- 
spicuously for the better, in another tragically for 
the worse. The improvement of course consists 
in the infinitely higher standard of clerical duty. 
The Hunting Parson is extinct — he went out with 
good old Jack Russell of Swymbridge; the Shoot- 



THE COUNTRY PARSON 59 

ing Parson is comparatively rare, and the Curate 
who spends his life in lawn-tennis has no exist- 
ence outside Punch. The great religious re- 
vival which sprang from Oxford in 1833 has 
penetrated the remotest corners of the country ; 
and in the large majority of cases the Country 
Parson is as earnest a priest and as diligent a 
pastor as his brother in the town. 

But there is another side to the picture. The 
elevation in the standard of clerical duty has been 
pathetically, and one might almost say unjustly, 
accompanied by the most terrible fall in clerical 
emolument. Agricultural depression has almost 
destroyed the income from glebe and tithe. The 
comfortable vicarage of " S. G. O.'s " vision, with 
its carriage-horses and its garden and its a old oak 
chairs," has been replaced by a condition of things 
which painfully recalls Hooker's lament over the 
" Corroding Cares of a Country Parsonage." The 
vast discrepancy between the few rich livings in 
England and the immense number of poor ones 
has long been a reproach to the Church ; and, 
when the ratio between income and duty is taken 
into account, the reproach becomes a scandal. 
I have heard a Bishop say that one winter 
afternoon he arrived unexpectedly at the door 
of a vicarage in the Fens. He rang at the door, 
but could make no one hear, and was turning 
away from the house when a bedroom window 
was opened, and the Vicar called from above, 
a I will be down in a minute, my Lord." Pre- 



60 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

sently he opened the door, and thus frankly 
apologized for having kept his diocesan waiting : 
" I am a bachelor. I can't afford even one ser- 
vant ; and in winter, when the day's work is done, 
I generally go to bed about sunset so as to save 
the cost of coal and candle." 

The present Bishop of Lincoln has expressed 
the conviction that the only method by which 
the country clergy of his diocese can be saved 
from destruction is the amalgamation of the 
smaller benefices. There lie before me as I write 
the petitions, in each case authenticated by the 
archdeacon and a magistrate, of more than a 
hundred applicants for relief from a clerical 
charity. £90 a year is the income of a benefice 
in Herefordshire, ^95 in Glamorganshire, ^87 in 
Huntingdonshire, £92 in Flintshire, £52 in Merion- 
ethshire, £96 in Norfolk, ^"ioo is a large income 
in any part of Wales; ^"150 a good average in 
England. And out of these exiguous funds patri- 
archal families must be supported. " Six children 
wholly dependent," writes one poor parson ; " five," 
another ; " seven," a third ; " eight," a fourth ; 
" eight, and one partly," a fifth. And, in addition 
to these usual troubles of small means and large 
families, a vast number of the clergy have ex- 
ceptional and special burdens to bear. 

" Petitioner has widowed mother and sister 
dependent on him." 

"One son is an invalid." 

" Petitioner is incapacitated for clerical duty." 



THE COUNTRY PARSON 61 

" Petitioner and his wife chronic invalids." 
" Petitioner's wife and daughters all down with 
typhoid." 

u Petitioner must undergo operation for catar- 
act." 

" Petitioner suffers from angina pectoris." 
" Petitioner and wife both ill, and maintain an 
aged father ; one son in an asylum, wholly de- 
pendent." 

Such are the conditions of life in the ministry 
of a Church which enjoys a secured and acknow- 
ledged income of nearly six millions, and of which 
the chief pastor has ^15,000 a year, the finest 
house in London, and an agreeable residence at 
Canterbury. 



CHAPTER IX 
THE TOWN PARSON 

In discussing the " Pore Persoun of a Toun " I 
shall defy the shade of Mr. Justice Blackstone 
and use the word " Parson " in its " clownish and 
familiar sense," as meaning a clergyman, whether 
beneficed or not. I leave out of sight the opulent 
rectors of city churches and the popular preachers 
of the West End, where the liberality of the flock 
makes good the deficiencies of the endowment. 
I have in view the huge mass of parochial clergy 
who bear the burden and do the work of the 
Church in the poor and populous districts of 
Central, East, and South London. And here it 
is to be remembered that in a " slum parish " the 
distinction between Vicar and Curate is far less 
clearly marked than in the country or the West 
End of London. I remember a village near my 
home in the South Midlands where a very dignified 
" Squarson " of the old school asked a cottager's 
wife if her child had been baptized. The young 
mother, who had a proper sense of what belongs 
to the Powers that Be, diffidently made answer, 
" Well, sir, I shouldn't like to say as much as that, 

but your young man came and did what he could." 

62 



THE TOWN PARSON 63 

That is a misconception of the ministerial function 
which would never occur in a slum-parish. There 
the tripartite order of Bishop, Rector, and Curate 
is unknown. All the staff are priests (with per- 
haps the exception of a very raw {deacon who is 
learning his business), and the Vicar is not an 
autocrat or a "boss," but simply a First among 
Equals, or, if he is considerably older than his 
colleagues, a father and a referee. So close is 
this identification of the whole staff in an East 
End parish that the children do not often know 
the clergy apart. To the infant mind the shaved, 
pale faces crowned with birettas, and the spare, 
active figures draped in cassocks, seem all one ; 
and a gutter-urchin will come scurrying up to 
young Jones, just ordained from Ely, with raptur- 
ous cries of " I see yer, Father Smith " ; whereas 
Father Smith is a staid vicar of twenty years' 
standing. But names do not matter, for all the 
Clergy are the children's friends. 

The Town Parson of the type which I am now 
considering dwells usually in a Clergy-house. 
To occupy lodgings in a slum is a gloomy and 
insalubrious lot ; but the Clergy-house is com- 
modious, airy, and sociable. As a rule, this Town 
Parson is a bachelor. As I said before, this does 
not imply that he is a celibate by conviction ; but 
he realizes that the Married Parson in a slum is as 
grotesquely out of place as the bachelor in the 
country parsonage, and that a brood of clerical 
infants reared in Shoreditch or Rotherhithe would 



64 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

only too probably illustrate in their own persons 
that degeneracy of the race over which physicists 
and publicists just now make such ado. 

And now let us picture our Parson's life and 
day, and paint them against the background 
of his earlier experiences. He comes from a 
more or less comfortable home, for a parent who 
is badly off can scarcely afford to train his son 
for Holy Orders. He has been educated at a 
Public School and a University, and up to his 
twenty-fourth year has been accustomed to a life 
of strenuous idleness, living almost entirely out 
of doors, and indulged to the top of his bent in 
every form of athletic exercise. If — -a rarer case 
— he has cared more for books than for games, 
he has read them among the delicious surround- 
ings of College gardens and University libraries ; 
he has been master of his own time ; and, in his 
own way, has been just as idle and self-indulgent 
as his more muscular brother in the Boat or the 
Eleven. Now all this is changed, with a sudden 
reverse which tries the heart and nerve of the 
strongest. From Sunday to Sunday our Town 
Parson scarcely sees a blue sky or tastes a breath 
of country air. A young priest of my acquaint- 
ance, just appointed to a mission-church in Poplar, 
by way of making the best of a bad situation said 
cheerfully to one of his flock, " What a fine breeze 
you get from the river here ! I declare I can 
almost smell the sea." But this bright optimism 
only elicited the depressed rejoinder, "Ah! I 



THE TOWN PARSON 65 

shouldn't wonder if you did, sir. We get a lot 
of shocking smells in Poplar." 

Our Parson rises early — to the lay mind it would 
seem unnecessarily so. Day by day, summer and 
winter, he is in church by six or seven — at times 
of ecclesiastical pressure by four or five. Then he 
gobbles his breakfast, blows his pipe, and rushes 
to the school, where he instils as much dogma 
as the infant mind is capable of receiving and the 
Kenyon-Slaney Clause will allow him to impart. 
Then come two hours of what is by courtesy 
termed " theological reading," and really consists 
in the careful preparation, with the aid of com- 
mentaries, concordances, and tobacco, of the too- 
numerous sermons, addresses, and Bible-lessons, 
which the modern Parson, irrespective of all 
natural qualification, is expected to deliver. Then 
comes dinner — not, as a rule, a luxurious feast, 
for the housekeeper of a Clergy-house is generally 
chosen for age, misfortune, and church-going 
habits rather than for culinary skill ; then a 
lounge, a chat, another pipe ; and then a long 
afternoon of that indefatigable house-to-house 
visitation which is the peculiar strength of the 
Church's system and the foundation of her popu- 
larity in poor districts. Then tea; then more 
visiting, designed to catch the men who are at 
work in the afternoon ; and all the innumerable 
clubs, classes, and guild-meetings which form the 
social side of a clergyman's work. To leave 
the Word of God and serve billiard-tables is a 

E 



66 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

necessity too often imposed upon the Town 
Parson ; and it is just in this department of his 
work that a popular curate, fresh from Oxford 
or Cambridge, has so great a pull. As a rule 
his lay friends stick to him in his new surround- 
ings, and once or twice a week barristers leave 
their briefs, and officers their mess-rooms, and 
young sparks of fashion their balls and operas 
in order to lend a hand in social and educational 
work to a clerical "pal" with whom, two or 
three years ago, they shared the fun of Bulling- 
don, or Vincent's, or the A.D.C. 

Hours in London are late — everything begins 
about an hour after its appointed time, and ends 
accordingly. It is past eleven by the time that 
our Parson gets back to his room and the delights 
of cocoa, tobacco, and talk with a brother-cleric 
of congenial tastes. Midnight strikes and the 
demands of to-morrow morning loom. But it is 
hard to curtail the only hours of the day which 
are left free for social enjoyment and safe from 
parochial interruption. And so the Parson burns 
the candle, in a literal sense, at both ends, and 
if he breaks down, breaks down, in my experi- 
ence, much oftener from want of sleep than from 
excess of work or deficiency of food. "The 
Church is worse than a Highwayman," bitterly 
said a worn-out priest of my acquaintance. "The 
Highwayman only said, 'Your money or your 
life;' the Church says, 'Your money and your 
life/ and, by Jove, she gets them." 



THE TOWN PARSON 67 

Such are some of the trials of the Town 
Parson's lot. What are his rewards ? Let the 
following letter, received by Mr. Gladstone when 
Prime Minister, suggest the answer : — 

"Sir, — Doubtless you do not often get a letter 
from a Working Man on the subject of clerical 
appointments, but as I here you have got to find 

a minister for to fill Mr. 's place allow me 

to ask you to just go some Sunday afternoon 

and here our little Curate Mr. he is a good 

earnest little man and a genuine little Fellow 
got no humbug about him but a sound Church- 
man is an Extempor preacher and deserves 
promotion. Nobody knows I am writing this to 
you and it is not a matter of Kiss and go by 
faviour, but simply asking you to take a run 
over and then put him a step higher he deserves 
it. Now do go over and here him before you 
make a choise. We working men will be sory 
to loose him but we think he ought not to be 
missed promotion as he is a good fellow." 



CHAPTER X 

THE BISHOP 

When the Ecclesiastical Commission was begin- 
ning to lay violent hands on the property of the 
Deans and Chapters, Sydney Smith wrote to 
Archdeacon Singleton : " It is a long time since 
you heard from me, and in the meantime the 
poor Church of England has been trembling, from 
the Bishop who sitteth upon the throne to the 
Curate who rideth upon the hackney horse." 
For "hackney horse" read " Dunlop tyre" and 
the sentence will do as well now as when it was 
penned in 1838. Only here we turn it upside 
down, and, having discussed the Curate, we rise 
to more exalted themes and analyse the Bishop. 

Here let it be eagerly admitted that the type 
has improved. One hundred and ten years ago 
the jaundiced eye of William Cowper thus re- 
garded a clergyman thirsty for preferment, a 
Bishop in the making : — 

" The wretch shall rise, and be the thing on earth 
Least qualified in honour, learning, worth, 
To occupy a sacred, awful post, 
In which the best and worthiest tremble most. 
The Royal Letters are a thing of course — 
A King, that would, might recommend his horse, 

68 



THE BISHOP 69 

And Deans, no doubt, and Chapters with one voice, 

As bound in duty, would confirm the choice. 

Behold your bishop ! well he plays his part — 

Christian in name, and infidel in heart, 

Ghostly in office, earthly in his plan, 

A slave at Court, elsewhere a lady's man. 

Yet Providence that seems concerned t' exempt 
The hallowed Bench from absolute contempt, 
In spite of all the wrigglers into place, 
Still keeps a seat or two for worth and grace ; 
And therefore 'tis that, though the sight be rare, 
We sometimes see a Lowth or Bagot there." 

For "Lowth or Bagot" read " Gore or Talbot" 
and the historic continuity of the English Epis- 
copate is admirably exemplified. 

Forty years later a Canon of St. Paul's — a fore- 
runner of our Newbolts and our Hollands — wrote : 
" Bishops live in high places with high people, 
or with little people who depend upon them. 
They hear only one sort of conversation, and 
avoid bold, reckless men, as a lady veils herself 
from rough breezes." Those words were written 
sixty years ago, but the testimony remains true, 
and " bold, reckless men " who talk of abuses and 
reforms seldom have an opportunity of breathing 
their thoughts into episcopal ears. 

The present writer is known as a friend of the 
"Inferior Clergy." In the austere refectories of 
Gothic Clergy-houses he is a frequent guest. He 
shares the cold beef and pewter-pot of the curate's 
lodging. Through the fumes of our after-dinner 
pipe we meditate upon the Church as it is and 



70 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

as it might be. We think how nice we should 
look in a purple cassock, what public - spirited 
use we could make of a Palace, and how unsel- 
fishly we should spend our £5000 a year. We 
constantly study that last wonderful series of 
papers on " Church Difficulties," published by 
the S.P.C.K., which seeks to persuade the London 
artisans that their highest interests would suffer 
if the Archbishop of Canterbury drew less than 
^"15,000 a year. We shed tears of respectful 
sympathy over that touching tale of harsh exac- 
tion patiently endured which ft A Diocesan Bishop " 
contributed to the series. We admire when we 
read that it cost his lordship ^2500 to settle himself 
comfortably in his new house, and wonder if we 
could have done it more cheaply. We are in- 
terested to learn that the most hideous of all 
known costumes, the episcopal " Magpie," costs 
£100, and we fancy that Mrs. Bishop could have 
stitched together something more comely at less 
cost. Hospitality to the tune of £2000 a year 
rather staggers us, for our own modest house- 
keeping assures us that a great deal of bread 
and cheese and beer and mutton can be pro- 
cured for a very moderate figure. 

About the expenses incidental to such patriarchal 
appendages as wives and children — ball-gowns for 
the girls and cigars for the boys — we do not pre- 
sume to dogmatize ; and we are quite prepared to 
believe the " Diocesan Bishop " when he assures 
us that "stables are almost a necessity, and in 



THE BISHOP 71 

some respects a saving." So we had all schooled 
ourselves into a very proper state of mind ; we 
had persuaded ourselves that things are well as 
they are, and that " Purple, Palaces, Patronage, 
Profit, and Power" (as Sydney Smith enumerated 
them) were not only very nice for those who 
enjoyed them, but were, in some mysterious way 
never quite explained, inextricably involved in the 
well-being of our Apostolic Church. 

But events have been happening within the 
last two years or so which have tended to disturb 
this optimistic calm. We hear disturbing rumours 
about the newer Bishops. We are told that they 
are beginning to set their faces against the solemn 
plausibilities which have accumulated round their 
office. They are trying to act, when Bishops, on 
the principles which they professed when Priests. 
They are trying to illustrate Christian Socialism 
by practical life — not merely by reading The 
Commonwealth and subscribing to the C.S.U., 
lamenting that there is no money for Old-age 
Pensions because it has been spent on the South 
African War, or ingeminating "Temperance Re- 
form " while they support a political party enslaved 
to the liquor-trade. The newer Bishops are trying 
to get rid of "palatial residences" and to live in 
modest houses in accessible places, where they 
can see and be seen by the clergy and laity. The 
all-conquering parlour-maid is routing the purple 
retinue which in other days opened a bishop's 
front door and ushered the trembling curate into 



72 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

the awful study. The tram and the bicycle 
are replacing that stable which the " Diocesan 
Bishop" found such a saving. "The stair-carpets 
at Farnham Castle are measured by miles/' moaned 
Bishop Thorold. " My episcopal income goes in 
Pelargoniums/' murmured Bishop Stubbs. " It 
takes ten chaps to keep this place in order," cried 
a more vernacular prelate, as he surveyed his 
lawns. 

But, if the levelling example of some recent 
Bishops " catches on," all these will soon be voices 
of an unreturning past. Farewell to Lambeth, 
with its Guard-room, and Fulham, with its plea- 
sure-grounds, and Farnham, with its deer-park, 
and Wells, with its moated garden. We have 
been taught that these things endeared the Church 
to the toiling masses and cheered the laborious 
curate in his dingy lodging. But, if the rash 
career of episcopal innovation is to go unchecked, 
they will not long survive. Instead of them, we 
shall see square, commodious houses of red brick, 
with " gravelled sweeps" and stunted laurels. A 
buttony boy will discharge the functions of the 
stately gate-porter, and a neat damsel in a white 
cap will carve the episcopal sirloin and pour the 
foaming lemonade ; and where, not many years 
ago, the Prince-Bishop rolled from his castle to 
the parish church in a coach-and-four, his suc- 
cessor will trudge through the mud, or scale the 
knife-board of the 'bus, bearing in his own apostolic 
hands the sacred appliances of mitre or " magpie." 



THE BISHOP 73 

And, when these things come to pass, they will 
be only the outward signs of more momentous 
change. In 1843, Dr. Hook, of Leeds, the greatest 
parish priest in the Church of England, as Mr. 
Gladstone called him, wrote thus to Bishop 
Wilberforce : — 

"We want not proud lords, haughty spiritual 
peers, to be our bishops. Offer four thousand 
out of their five thousand a year for the education 
of the people, and call upon the more wealthy of 
the other clergy to do the same, and a fund is 
at once provided. Let Farnham Castle and Win- 
chester House and Ripon Palace be sold, and 
we shall have funds to establish other bishoprics. 
Let the Church do something like this, and then 
the Church will live in the hearts of the people, 
who now detest her. . . . You see I am almost 
a Radical, for I do not see why our bishops should 
not become poor as Ambrose or Augustine, that 
they make the people really rich." 

Those who remember the most popular prelate 
in Society will have no difficulty in believing 
that this suggestion met with a very chilling 
response. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE PAINFUL PREACHER 

The phrase is Elizabethan, and, rightly understood, 
not invidious. An eminent physician 1 (highly to be 
honoured for the number of Board-School children 
whom he rescued from overwork and blindness 
would perhaps use it in a different sense, for he 
has recently had his righteous soul vexed by the 
Foolishness of Preaching. He uttered his com- 
plaint at Congresses and Institutes, and when re- 
buked by indignant clergymen he only reaffirmed 
that "the Silly Sermon is still a painful fact." 
"Are Sermons Silly?" would have been an ex- 
cellently appropriate topic for discussion during 
the " Silly Season " ; fit to rank with " Is Marriage 
a Failure ? " " Ought we to eat meat ? " and even 
with the grand and all-embracing simplicity of 
" What is Wrong ? " 

We have already traced the Preacher through 
the earlier stages of his development as Schoolboy 
and Undergraduate. Bishop Thirlwall composed 
sermons (which were afterwards published) in his 
seventh year. Charles Kingsley preached from the 
nursery table at ten. Dr. Liddon, ere yet he had 

1 Sir James Crichton-Browne. 

74 



THE PAINFUL PREACHER 75 

gone to school, composed the most heart-searching 
discourses, and inscribed them, with touching de- 
votion, to his maiden aunt. But such instances 
of homiletic precocity are, for good or for evil, 
rare ; and we may safely assume that, even of those 
who look towards Holy Orders as their work in 
life, the large majority reach their twenty-second 
or twenty-third year in virginal innocence of the 
art of sermon-composing. In enumerating a 
clergyman's qualifications, Frederick Robertson 
reckoned, by a pleasing paradox, " that knowledge 
of evil which comes, not of contact with it, but of 
repulsion from it." An undergraduate's knowledge 
of sermons is generally of the same description. 

A sense of the unseemly absurdity involved in 
dragging an untaught youth from the River, the 
Cinder-track, or the A.D.C., and placing him in 
a tower above the heads of a mixed company of 
people old enough to be his grandparents, with 
instructions to correct, exhort, and teach them for 
twenty minutes twice every Sunday, has at length 
dawned on the mind of the English Episcopate. 
Bishops nowadays urge candidates for Orders to 
spend a year at a Theological College, where they 
may acquire, at any rate, the elements of theology, 
the technical rules for composing a written ad- 
dress, and the rudiments of voice-production. 
Thus equipped, our B.A. is ordained Deacon, and 
becomes a curate, perhaps one of several, perhaps 
single-handed, under an incumbent who may or 
may not be willing to take the main share of the 



76 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

week's sermons. And now our curate's troubles 
begin — now is the trial of the budding Preacher, 
and now is the righteous soul of Sir J. Crichton- 
Browne (and of others like him) vexed by the 
Foolishness of Preaching. I too have shared the 
affliction ; but suffer me, as a dutiful son of the 
Church of England, to point out that herein the 
Church itself is blameless. I turn to my Prayer- 
book (which, excepting the Bible, is the last book 
which an ordinary Englishman ever reads), and I 
look at the promises which the Church, by the 
mouth of the Bishop, demands from the youth 
who comes to be ordained Deacon : — 

u Bishop : It appertained to the Office of a 
Deacon, in the church where he shall be ap- 
pointed to serve, to assist the Priest in Divine 
Service, and specially when he ministereth the 
Holy Communion, and to help him in the distri- 
bution thereof, and to read Holy Scriptures and 
Homilies in the church, and to instruct the youth 
in the Catechism ; in the absence of the Priest, 
to baptize infants, and to preach, if he be admitted 
thereto by the Bishop. Will you do this gladly 
and willingly ? 

" Answer : I will do so, by the help of God." 

Now it will be observed that this promise binds the 
Deacon to very little in the way of preaching. He 
is to read the Bible in church, and Homilies (which 
are not of his own composing), and to catechize ; 
and then, as a kind of extra duty, to preach if the 



THE PAINFUL PREACHER 77 

Bishop licenses him to do so. Unfortunately, his 
Bishop always licenses him, and the supposed 
necessities of parochial work require him, to 
preach. Some of the more reasonable Bishops 
direct that during the year of his diaconate the 
newly-ordained curate shall preach only once a 
month, so that he may have some margin of time 
for study ; but too often that passion for incessant 
sermon-hearing which characterizes English re- 
ligion constrains the wretched youth to preach 
once or twice every week. The year of his dia- 
conate elapses. His theological education is now 
considered complete. He passes the Bishop's final 
examination, is raised to the Priesthood, and then, 
with the proud consciousness that he can never 
again be subjected to examination, even though 
he lives to be a hundred, 

" Leaps the wild stream, and revels to be free.", 

In plain prose, all limitations on his preaching are 
removed, and henceforward, for the term of his 
natural life, he will preach twice every Sunday, 
and certainly once, and probably oftener, during 
the week. No wonder that the Foolishness of 
Preaching is still, as in St. Paul's time, a recog- 
nized reality — no wonder that too often the 
preacher is " painful " in the invidious sense. 

But here again I must protest that the Church 
of England is free from blame. The appetite for 
preaching is a product of Puritanism, which, 
having substituted for the beauty of Divine 



78 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

Worship what Matthew Arnold called " the most 
dismal performance ever invented by man," turned 
to Preaching in sheer despair for the needed ele- 
ment of brightness and interest in its public devo- 
tions. The passion for sermons — imported, as I 
believe, from Geneva — struck deep root in our 
national character. We think ourselves aggrieved 
unless we have a considerable sermon both at 
morning and at evening service on Sunday, and 
never think of going to a week-day service unless 
the praying is to be followed by preaching. To 
this base passion of our fallen nature the clergy 
pander even shamefully. In season and out of 
season, they preach and preach and preach ; al- 
though the large majority of them have, from the 
necessities of the case, very little to say, and, if they 
had, could not say it. It is the tyranny of the 
Puritan tradition that cries aloud for sermons, 
and the incessancy of the demand makes the 
Foolishness of Preaching. 

Yet once again the Church is blameless. The 
Church does not demand, does not even suggest, a 
sermon at morning or evening prayer. The only 
sermon which the Church of England knows is 
the sermon appointed to be delivered, after the 
Creed and before the Offertory, in the service of 
the Holy Communion. Thus the Church sanc- 
tions only one sermon on each Sunday, and even 
then provides that the clergyman, if he prefers it, 
may read an authorized homily. One Sermon on 
the Sunday, That is the Church's rule. But we 



THE PAINFUL PREACHER 79 

require at least two, often three, and sometimes 
two in the week as well. The clergy are weak 
enough to comply with our demand ; but the re- 
sulting Foolishness of Preaching is our fault and 
not theirs. Among the worst offenders in this way 
of unauthorized preaching are the Bishops, who 
insist, in defiance of rubrics, on interpolating into 
the Service for Confirmation two long and gene- 
rally rather feeble sermons, which, though thinly 
disguised under the name of "Charges," still dis- 
play the true characteristics of Preaching. 

If only the clergy would harden their hearts to 
defy our morbid appetites and would return to the 
Church's rule of one sermon for each Sunday and 
no more, the preaching power of the Church's 
ministry would be abundantly adequate to the 
moderate demand made upon it, and the Sermon 
would resume its modest place as an adjunct to 
Divine Worship, instead of, as now, monopolizing 
the interest and the attention. After all said and 
done, the Church's object in gathering Christians 
together on the first day of the week is worship, 
and worship is not preaching. A good sermon 
may incite to worship and may help it. A bad 
sermon may arouse the worst passions of church- 
going nature. But the best sermon which was 
ever preached on earth is no substitute for "the 
Lord's Service on the Lord's Day." Vidimus 
stellam Ejus in oriente } et venimus adorare Euin. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE POPULAR PREACHER 

The " Popular Preacher " was a favourite figure in 
Victorian fiction and satire, but the type seems 
to have undergone profound modifications. The 
Preacher is still with us, and as popular as ever ; 
but it is difficult to trace a resemblance to his 
prototypes as drawn with pen by Dickens, with 
pencil by Leech, and with both pen and pencil 
by Thackeray. In all those presentments of the 
Popular Preacher, physical and sartorial attributes 
play leading parts. Dickens, describing the fas- 
cinating curate, says that he a parted his hair in the 
centre of his forehead in the form of a Norman 
arch, wore a brilliant of the first water on the 
fourth finger of his left hand (which he always 
applied to the left cheek when he read prayers), 
and had a deep, sepulchral voice of unusual 
solemnity." Charles Honeyman passed through 
some theological vicissitudes, but after he had 
taken to Puseyism he " diffused an odour of Milk- 
fleurs as he passed from the pew to the vestry and 
took his place at the desk. His scarf was trimmed 
down to be as narrow as your neckcloth, and hung 

loose and straight over the back ; the ephod was 

80 



THE POPULAR PREACHER 81 

cut straight and as close and short as might be, 
with a little trimming of lace to the narrow sleeves 
and a slight arabesque of tape round the edge of 
the surplice." The Rev. L. Oriel, the pet clergy- 
man of "Our Street," was distinguished by "the 
immense height of his forehead, the rigid asceticism 
of his surplice, and the twang with which he in- 
toned the service." Kingsley's friend, Mr. O'Blare- 
way, the popular preacher of Steamingbath, was 
discovered, after he had married the opulent 
widow, to be " not quite so young as he appeared, 
his graces being principally owing to a Brutus 
wig." Lord Beaconsfield's ideal Ritualist, Mr. 
Smyllie, who was Private Chaplain to Lothair, was 
"attended by acolytes and censed by thurifers, 
while his ecclesiastical wardrobe furnished him 
with many-coloured garments suited to every 
season of the year and every festival of the 
Church." 

Apart from these characteristics of feature and 
garb, the Popular Preachers of fiction were always 
in delicate health. It was either a morbid trait 
in the public feeling of the time, or at least a 
well-recognized convention, to regard bodily sick- 
ness in a clergyman as contributing largely to his 
spiritual efficiency. Dickens is careful to describe 
his popular curate as suffering from a consumptive 
catarrh. Mr. Sherrick, when multiplying the at- 
tractions of Lady Whittlesea's restored chapel, 
instructed Charles Honeyman to cough during the 
Prayers. " The women like a consumptive parson, 

F 



82 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

Sir." Young Oriel at Mrs. Chauntry's party 
heaves a deep sigh and reels, moaning — " I took 
a little water and a parched pea after Matins. 
To-morrow is a flesh-day, and I shall be better 
then." 

Another characteristic of the Popular Preacher 
in fiction is that he is frankly and secularly avari- 
cious. He lets the cellars under his chapel for 
wine-vaults. His daily study is to " suit the Gospel 
to the aristocracy." His mental eye is always 
fixed on his pew-rents. His theology and ritual 
vary with the varying demands of the pew-renting 
public. And, lest the writer of fiction should be 
accused of sordid misrepresentation, Archbishop 
Magee, when the Popular Preacher of the Octagon 
Chapel at Bath, thus communed with a spiritual 
brother: "I am, I fear, a fixture here for life, 
fishing always in my little glass bowl of an 
Octagon for such gold and silver fishes as can be 
coaxed into it." And ten years later he wrote to 
the same confidant: "As to promotion, I am 
trying to put it out of my head, and to settle 
down contentedly to ^"300 a year and six 
children." 

Now all these characteristics of the Popular 
Preacher have entirely and simultaneously dis- 
appeared. There are plenty of Popular Preachers 
in London, and they preach all manner of theo- 
logies and appeal to the most widely different 
audiences. But no one cares a rap about their 
personal appearance — the way they part their hair, 



THE POPULAR PREACHER 83 

or the texture of their surplices, or the colour of 
their stoles. Then the Popular Preachers of to-day 
are physically robust. It is not thought the least 
interesting to cough, or swoon, or cling to the 
gas-jet over the pulpit for support. A Popular 
Preacher who is a little out of sorts conceals the 
infirmity as pluckily as though he were a soldier or 
an actor. A change seems to have passed over the 
appetite of church-goers, and doctrine is no longer 
rendered more acceptable by hectic or cardiac ac- 
companiments. Once again, the Popular Preacher 
is, so far as a critic can judge, perfectly indifferent 
to money. He does not, as far as I can see, " tune 
the pulpit" to suit his audience. I have known 
preachers in very " aristocratic " churches who did 
not conceal their Radicalism ; preachers who were 
on excellent terms with scientific men, and yet 
openly denounced vivisection ; preachers who 
thundered against the iniquities of the money- 
market over rows of open-handed stockbrokers. 
I wish I could add that I remember one who 
denounced the South African War to a congre- 
gation packed with Imperialists and Jingoes ; but 
in this matter my experience resembles that of 
Mr. Silvester Home and Mr. Mudie Smith. 1 

Having so far described my Popular Preacher 
by negatives, let me proceed to a more positive 
characterization. How does the Popular Preacher 
emerge ? In other words, how does he become 
popular ? There are two roads to the position of 

1 These gentlemen stated that the Church encouraged the War. 



84 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

Popular Preacher — the one ^ parochial, the other 
academic. The Popular Preacher who has been 
parochially bred is rather a rare bird. The con- 
ditions of a curate's life — already sufficiently indi- 
cated in these pages — do not conduce to success- 
ful preaching. And, even though the curate had 
the gifts of Chrysostom or Gregory Nazianzen, he 
would emerge with difficulty from the parochial 
system. The one deep conviction held in common 
by all incumbents — High, Low, and Broad — is that 
young men want keeping in their proper places, 
and that the natural sphere for the curate's activity 
is the Children's Service on Sunday afternoon or 
the lecture for District Visitors and maid-servants 
on Wednesday evening. If these ministrations 
can be performed at some distant District Church 
or obscure Mission Chapel, so much the better for 
the mental peace of the incumbent, who loves 
neither novelty in doctrine nor competition in 
popularity. Now and then — once or twice in 
twenty years — a curate breaks his low estate's 
invidious bar and secures recognition as a Popular 
Preacher. The greatest preacher in London at 
this moment has been a curate at St. Alban's, 
Holborn, for more than forty years. But in the 
large majority of cases a man has no chance of 
making his preaching power known until he has a 
pulpit of his own. When, by whatever methods, 
he has attained to that desired eminence, a little 
circle gathers round him; pushes, praises, and 
puffs him on every conceivable occasion. So 



THE POPULAR PREACHER 85 

the ex-curate must exchange obscurity and irre- 
sponsibility for a conspicuous position and a duty 
which tries to the uttermost the stuff of which he is 
made. But this method of approaching the position 
of " Popular Preacher " answers admirably well, as 
the history of St. Peter's, Eaton Square, and Holy 
Trinity, Sloane Street, and St. Michael's, Chester 
Square, during the last thirty years sufficiently 
attests. I have hardly ever known a religious 
power so strong and so enduring as that which 
was exercised by the present Bishop of St. 
Andrews 1 over the beliefs and lives of his Bel- 
gravian congregation between 1870 and 1880. 

But the more usual road to Popularity as a 
Preacher is academic. The Canonries of St. 
Paul's and the Abbey, and such independent 
posts as the Mastership of the Temple and the 
Preachership of Lincoln's Inn, generally go to 
persons of more or less academical fame. A 
young clergyman, with a good degree, an easy 
Fellowship, and not very much to do in college, 
has an excellent opportunity of learning to preach. 
Perhaps he attaches himself to a Bishop ; perhaps 
his bosom friend is a 'Cabinet Minister's son ; 
perhaps he publishes a little book of namby- 
pamby theology and dedicates it to a great per- 
sonage — "the sort of book," said Dr. Liddon of 
a volume inscribed by a disciple to Bishop West- 
cott — "the sort of book which a Little Fog 
writes and inscribes to the Great Fog." But, 

1 The Right Rev. G. II. Wilkinson. 



86 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

let the method be what it will, the academi- 
cal preacher sooner or later gets access to a 
London pulpit, and then, if he has the real gift, 
he is fairly launched on his career as Popular 
Preacher. 

And now comes the interesting comparison 
between the parochially-bred and the academi- 
cally-bred preacher. What is the difference ? 
What is the similarity ? At first the academical 
gentleman is a little more inclined to air his 
culture. He gives us views about readings and 
manuscripts ; diffuses himself over the history of 
the Roman Empire, and goes to Plato for the 
solution of the problems which beset modern 
society. But all this passes off in time. The 
learned gentleman discards his culture, partly 
because it begins to bore his hearers ; partly 
because his unlearned neighbour can do it as 
well with the aid of two cribs, a " handbook " 
and a a skeleton " ; and partly— the best reason 
of all — because he is in earnest about his work, 
and quickly realizes that burdened hearts and 
troubled consciences want more effective relief 
than can be supplied by the topography of Asia 
Minor or the speculations of the Gnostics. The 
characteristic which all the Popular Preachers of 
the day have in common is earnestness. They 
speak as men speak who are convinced of what 
they say, and therefore they never lack congre- 
gations. There is very little in their preaching to 
catch the itching ear. The Bishop of Birmingham 



THE POPULAR PREACHER 87 

was perhaps the most popular preacher in London 
when he was Canon of Westminster, and his 
deficiencies in the way of literary style were 
actually ludicrous. Canon Newbolt reads polished 
periods from reams of manuscript. Dr. Holland 
has an art of manipulating the English tongue 
which is all his own. But, taking them as a 
whole, the Popular Preachers care almost as 
little for oratorical form as for the arrangement 
of their hair or the cut of their surplices. They 
preach with the vigour, the explicitness, and the 
earnestness of men who are pleading their hardest 
for truth and purity and righteousness. The 
Popular Preacher of to-day by no means confines 
himself to dogma, but takes a wide and liberal 
survey of human life. A youth fresh from Oxford 
was dragged by an enthusiastic friend to hear a 
famous preacher at the West End. It was Trinity 
Sunday, and the preacher chose the special subject 
of the day. After service the Oxford youth, deep 
in the theology of the Pusey House, confessed 
some disappointment ; to which his friend replied, 
"Well, yes, it was unlucky. You see that isn't 

exactly 's subject. But last Sunday, he was 

simply splendid — on Motoring." All that the 
novelists saw and satirized — vanity, effeminacy, 
sickliness, avarice, and pose — has disappeared. 
The Popular Preacher has shed all his external 
attributes, but he remains a visible fact in the 
life of modern London. What is the explanation ? 
It is simply the old, old story. The troubles of 



88 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

the human soul are much the same in one age 
as in another, and the word which throws a light, 
however misty or broken, over the unseen realities 
will never lack its hearers. It is for that reason 
that Arthur Ingram, Bishop of London, is the 
most popular preacher in the Church of England. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE JOURNALIST 

A Nonconformist minister, who renounced his 
ministry and took to journalism, told me that 
the motive of his change was that he desired to 
" preach to a wider congregation." That cacoethes 
prcedixandi — that earnest desire to exhort, reprove, 
instruct; and edify — has determined many a jour- 
nalistic career. It is a desire which manifests 
itself early, and, when once it has rooted itself in 
the mental system, it grows with the growth and 
strengthens with the strength — like that " fell 
disease" of which the poet wrote. I have just 
been turning over some volumes of a monthly 
journal conducted by the boys of a great Public 
School. Of course the columns devoted to news 
contain a vast deal of athletic intelligence, to- 
gether with some very scanty references to scholar- 
ships and prizes ; but the editorial columns are 
profoundly didactic. Each article is headed, and I 
take some of the headings at random — " Bribery," 
" Secular Education," " Ecclesiastical Patronage," 
" Degeneration," " Papal Infallibility," " Irish Land 
Laws," » Military Organization," "The Rival Claims 

of Literature and Science." On each of these 

8 9 



90 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

rather massive themes the very young Lions of 
the editorial staff roar impressively. Some of the 
articles are really quite good, and urge an intensely 
conservative view of society and politics with 
point and cogency. But the striking characteristic 
of all the articles, good and bad alike, is Serious- 
ness. The writers are evidently impressed by the 
profound importance of the topics which they 
handle, and do their utmost to win the assent of 
their school-fellows, even when the topics, such as 
Patronage and Infallibility, lie a good way off the 
beaten track of schoolboys' interests. 

I feel convinced that some of the writers will 
develope into Journalists. They will go to Oxford 
or Cambridge, dabble in Essay Societies, speak 
at the Union, write for University and College 
magazines, perhaps even try their 'prentice-hands 
in the columns of the local press ; and, when 
they have got their degrees they will try, through 
the good offices of parents or friends — an uncle 
who holds a large share in the paper, or a sister 
who is on affectionate terms with the editor's wife 
— to annex themselves to some organ of light and 
leading ; and then, once launched, they will begin 
to preach in good earnest. A Journalist of this 
type once said to me, with all imaginable gravity, 
" I should, I confess, resent any change which 
interfered with my position as chief opinion- 
former in the neighbourhood of" — Leeds or Ply- 
mouth, or whatever was the name of his town. 
The man who wishes to preach to a wide congre- 



THE JOURNALIST 91 

gation and regards the newspaper as his natural 
and appropriate pulpit is the Journalist by Voca- 
tion. Only two years ago a boy in the Sixth 
Form of a Public School said, in reply to the 
usual question " What are you going to do ? " 
" I shall put in four years at Balliol, and then 
I shall join the staff of the Times" There spoke 
the Journalist by Vocation. 

But, if some of us become Journalists because 
we feel irresistibly attracted to the profession, some 
of us do the same because we can do nothing else. 
The late Master of Trinity, 1 preaching in Trinity 
Chapel on the Parable of the Talents to a con- 
gregation which thinks itself the most intellectual 
in the world, began his discourse by saying, " It 
would be out of place to expatiate on the wholly 
exceptional case of those persons who have five, 
or even two, talents. I shall therefore confine 
myself to the more ordinary case of those who 
have One Talent." Well, that one talent is the 
total capital with which most of us leave the Uni- 
versity, and there are some who fancy that their 
exiguous stock can be turned to better advantage 
in journalism than in any other field. 

Then again there is a class which may be said 
to have not one talent but a fraction of a talent — 
not a gift for journalism as a whole, but for some 
special subdivision of the craft. Thus one can de- 
scribe a boat-race, another a procession, a third 
a scene in the House. One can be u Mainly 

1 W. H. Thompson. 



92 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

wrong about People" at home, and another has 
a mysterious correspondent at the Vatican or the 
Kremlin. We all know that within the last thirty 
years fame and fortune have been built up on 
descriptions of the personal appearance of M.P.'s, 
and humorous delineations of such incidents as 
A. sitting on his hat or B. blowing his nose with 
a red silk handkerchief. This is Specialized Jour- 
nalism, and it has its reward. 

"Society Journalism" is also special. It may 
be done from the outside, by an ingenious collation 
of snippets from " London Letters " and " Ladies' 
Columns " ; only then it is apt to lack both 
actuality and freshness. It may be done from 
the inside ; but then the unfortunate result too 
often is that the writer is detected, disliked, and 
dropped; and then he has to join his shivering 
brethren outside. "Ah," said Matthew Arnold, 
with his sweetest smile, to a youth who had just 
got an article into a Society Journal of great 

renown, u I hear you have become one of 's 

hired Stabbers." The Stabber deserves his fate ; 
but it is hard on Tom Garbage, after he has done 
his best to write amiably, to get his knuckles 
rapped for writing at all. I remember an occasion, 
in the period of Mr. Gladstone's profoundest un- 
popularity — circiter 1887 — when a Tory, who had 
been on friendly terms with him in his pros- 
perity, asked him to dinner, but in a fcautious 
and Nicodemus-like manner. Tom Garbage had 
the honour of being invited to the party, and, 



THE JOURNALIST 93 

inebriated with glory (though with nothing else), 
announced in his column that, notwithstanding 
political disagreements, the Liberal leader had 
dined with his old friend. Poor Tom never 
crossed the threshold of the "old friend's" house 
again. 

Highly special, too, is Sporting Journalism, and 
it is most distinctively marked by the reluctance, 
strong in all journalists but strongest in Sporting 
Journalists, to call anything by its proper and 
simple name. To the Sporting Journalist a boat- 
race or a cricket-match is "The Battle of the 
Blues," Lord's is "the green-sward in St. John's 
Wood," the Derby is " The National Carnival." 
"The willow," "the leather," "the sticks," "the 
pig-skin," "the woods," and "the haling- way" dis- 
guise with playful art bats and balls and stumps 
and saddles and bowls and towing-paths ; and a 
crew which rows from Cambridge to Ely is said, 
in mouth-filling phrase, to " travel to the Cathedral 
City." For the fine flower of this jargon, bloom- 
ing in a poetic parterre, the reader is referred to 
Mr. Quiller Couch's " Ballad of the Jubilee Cup." 

Another highly specialized form of journalism 
is the Ecclesiastical, and in this department it 
may be remarked that a complete and manly 
ignorance is regarded as no disqualification for 
the work. Rather it seems to stimulate jour- 
nalistic activity by opening up the richest possi- 
bilities of fancy and conjecture. It is increasingly 
the fashion for secular papers to describe religious 



94 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

services, and a perusal of these descriptions leads 
one to suppose that the writers have never 
entered a church except in pursuit of their busi- 
ness. Being true Britons, they realize the im- 
portance of Preaching. They quite understand 
what a sermon is, and they report it with more 
or less intelligent care — especially if they can get a 
loan of the manuscript. But of what goes before or 
after the sermon — the nature of the service cele- 
brated, the meaning of the forms and ceremonies 
observed, the point and purpose and compass of 
the whole proceeding — they write as lucidly as a 
Board-School child might have written about the 
historical and liturgical aspects of the Corona- 
tion. Not long ago a daily paper, describing 
the Three Hours' Service on Good Friday at 
St. Alban's, Holborn, remarked, with immense 
significance, "No incense was used" — which is 
much the same as saying, in a description of 
a funeral, "There were no wedding-favours." 
Another paper, of which I am a devoted reader, 
describing the Bishop of London's Advent Ordi- 
nation at St. Paul's, gave a full report of the 
sermon, and wrote with palpitating sympathy 
about the pale faces and solemn eyes and 
snowy surplices of the candidates for Orders, and 
ended thus : " The procession was closed by the 
Bishop in his cope and mitre, the only incon- 
gruous figure in the scene." To describe the or- 
daining Bishop as " incongruous " at his ordination 
is surely a fine touch of Specialized Journalism. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE FADDIST 

We have spoken of the Preacher in the pulpit 
and the Preacher in the newspaper. There 
remains another type, the Preacher on the 
Platform — the Man of Causes, — in more invidious 
phrase, "The Faddist" "Poor fellow," said the 
dying Arminius of Matthew Arnold, "he had a 
soft head, but I valued his heart." The circum- 
stances of my life have made me acquainted 
with a vast number of people to whom that 
dichotomy would apply ; and my more worldly 
friends have not hesitated to insinuate it against 
myself, when they have traced my wandering 
footsteps from platform to platform, and have 
heard me pleading with equal passion for all 
(or nearly all) the Fads. 

In one respect, and one only, the Faddist 
resembles the Barrister. 

"Time writes no wrinkle on his azure brow." 

In more prosaic phrase, the lapse of years, and 
even of generations, makes little or no difference 
in the outward man. It was a profound distress 
to Charles Kingsley that in the early days of the 

L 95 



96 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

Co-operative Movement, when a clean-shaven lip 
and chin were still regarded as the indispensable 
badges of a rational Englishman, he was constantly 
associated with bearded men ; and that, at a time 
when the Roast Beef of Old England still held 
its bad eminence, his fellow-workers lived on 
pickles and pancakes. One day, at an important 
deputation to a Minister of State, a leading Co- 
operator appeared in a straw hat and blue plush 
gloves. " As if," said Kingsley in the bitterness 
of his soul — " as if we shall not be abused enough 
for what we must say and do, without being 
saddled with mischievous nonsense of this kind." 
To control the operations of commerce is beyond 
even the power of the Faddists, and blue plush 
gloves are, I believe, no longer procurable. If 
they were, I know full well that my comrades 
of the Platform would wear them ; and as it is, 
I constantly find myself cheek by jowl with the 
lineal descendants of Mr. Quale, who co-operated 
with Mrs. Jellyby in her African labours, and 
launched the project of teaching the natives to turn 
pianoforte-legs and establish an export trade. He 
was " a loquacious young man, with large shining 
knobs for temples, and his hair all brushed to 
the back of his head." I spend many fruitful 
hours in the company of such as Mr. Quale. It 
is obviously impossible, when we are discussing 
the Faddist, to ignore the female element, for 
womenkind supply the whole audience at the 
gatherings of the Faddists, and not seldom over- 



THE FADDIST 97 

flow the platform. An occasional male, peeping 
in furtively at the back of the hall or gazing down 
from the top gallery, seems to anticipate the fate 
of those who profaned the mysteries of Bona 
Dea, and swiftly disappears. The chairman smiles 
seraphically on the assemblage. Mrs. Jellyby and 
Mrs. Pardiggle are seated on his right ; on his 
left is young Mr. Quale, pallid and tremulous 
with suppressed oration, and in front of the 
platform a grey-black sea of waterproof spreads, 
wave behind wave, to the remotest recesses of 
the hall. For a man to criticize women's dress 
is to court destruction. It must therefore suffice 
to say that a woman addicted to " Causes " can 
be recognized among a thousand ; and when she 
is assembled in force her gleaming glasses and 
her uncompromising hat — sometimes her un- 
covered and closely - cropped head — afflict with 
a kind of stage-fright the most hardened orators 
of the platform. 

Of " Causes," as the enthusiasts call them — 
" Fads," as their detractors say, — Modern England 
has a glorious variety, and I cultivate friendly 
relations with the advocates of all. 

" I have looked in the face of the Bore, 
The voice of the Simple I know ; 
I have welcomed the Muff to my door, 
I have sat by the side of the Slow." 

And the curious part of it is that they are all 
exactly like one another. Each man — I need 

G 



98 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

not add each woman — believes with his whole 
heart and soul and mind and strength that in 
his particular Cause and no other is involved 
the real prosperity of the human race. This is 
the faith which removes mountains ; which fills 
collecting-plates ; which fortifies us against the 
dog-days' torrid glare and November's damp and 
fog ; which keeps our spirits cheerful even 
with half-filled rooms and irresponsive audiences. 
" Was it a large meeting ? " " Well, no ; the hall 
wasn't much more than a quarter full, and there 
was a good deal of room in the gallery." 
" Then perhaps it was influential ? " " Well, I 
should say it was chiefly composed of maiden 
ladies and servant-girls. The curate looked in 
for a minute, but went out. No ; I couldn't 
exactly call it influential, but it was a good meet- 
ing. There was a nice tone about it. It will 
help the Cause. I am very glad I came." Often 
indeed have I heard this cheerful note from the 
lips of a devoted Faddist whom no failure could 
daunt and no discouragement depress. 

The Faddist has a single eye to his fad, and 
Heaven forbid that I should say he has a 
double tongue. But it is undoubtedly true that 
the zeal of his Cause sometimes consumes his 
sense of accuracy, and that he says and writes 
a good many things which will not bear a too 
close criticism. Among all the Fads or Causes, 
there is none which appeals to me more forcibly 
than the movement against Vivisection ; but I 



THE FADDIST 99 

was a little aghast when a devoted servant of 
that Cause told me that some appalling state- 
ments, which had been put into my hands 
without reference or verification, were "what we 
term ' Platform\ Facts.' " This new and distinct 
order of Fact roams at large over the platforms 
of all the " Causes." Exaggeration is their bane. 
Opposition to scientific cruelty is not strengthened 
by the reiterated declaration that every humane 
man must wear vegetarian boots. The Food- 
Faddist may distend himself with cheese and 
nuts, but he injures his Cause when he insists 
that beef-steaks tend directly to homicide. The 
Temperance-Faddist has, Heaven knows, a wide 
enough and a sad enough field to work in, with- 
out affirming that the Publican is licensed by 
the State to rob and murder the community. 
Then, again, as regards the woman's right to a 
Parliamentary vote — but here my constitutional 
timidity stays my hand. Time would fail me to 
tell of religious Causes and their champions — the 
Missionary Cause, the Church Reform Cause, the 
Christian Social Union Cause, and fifty other like 
unto them. All have their leaders, their plat- 
form, their literature, their friends ; not seldom a 
journal devoted to their interests, often a u local 
habitation " — a hall or club where the adherents 
can foregather — and a " name " of greater or 
less brilliancy at the head of the List of 
Members. 

As, year in, year out, I watch these incessant 

LOFC 



ioo SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

labours for absolutely unselfish ends — for Mr. 
Quale takes neither fee nor reward and Mrs. 
Pardiggle subscribes handsomely to the fund — I 
profess that I have nothing but respect for the 
Fads which the world despises, and for the Fad- 
dists who are so oddly dressed. If only their 
scattered energies could be combined into one 
organized movement for Social Reform, surely 
the world might be bettered. The isolations and 
detachments of all efforts for good make the chief 
strength of banded and cohesive evil. 

But just as I pen these words comes a budget 
of sorry news for those who, like myself, love 
the Causes. We had formed the highest expec- 
tations of the new Head Master of Eton. We 
believed him to be a Faddist of the purest dye. 
As soon as his strenuous rule began, there was 
to be an end of convention and commonplace. 
The Eton Beagles were to be abolished ; the 
Eton boys were to be clothed in neat suits of 
Jaeger; il monkey-food " was to be their diet, the 
pure brook their beverage, and the balcony their 
sleeping-place. But all these heroic attempts to 
introduce our future Dukes and Premiers to the 
charms of the Simple Life prove to have been 
nothing more substantial than creations of the 
Faddists' fancy. The Eton boys are still to 
wear tall hats and round jackets and white waist- 
coats ; still they are to devour legs of sheep and 
oxen ; still to know " that poor creature, small 
beer " ; still to sleep in cupboard-bedsteads ; and 



THE FADDIST 101 

still to take some portion of their pleasure in 
blood-sports. Oh ! Canon Lyttelton, 

" Poor is the triumph o'er the timid hare." 

On that article, at any rate, of the humanita- 
rian creed I confess myself an irreclaimable 
Faddist. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE SOLDIER 

We have been discussing various types of profes- 
sional life and the changes which time has brought 
to them. We have spoken of the Schoolmaster, 
the Don, the Bishop, the Town Clergyman, and 
the Country Clergyman. We have left the Bar- 
rister on one side as being essentially unchanged 
by time or circumstance. Nullum tempus occurrit 
causidico. To-day I turn to another branch of pro- 
fessional life in which time has brought changes 
quite as marked as those of the clerical or the 
medical type. I am not thinking of the " scum 
of the earth," as the Duke of Wellington politely 
called the men who won his victories for him, 
but of that fine flower of English manhood, the 
"officer and gentleman." The alterations in this 
type are obvious enough to any one who recalls 
the fiction of thirty, forty, or fifty years ago. I 
cite Thackeray as my first witness. Colonel 
Newcome is indeed a most lovable character, but 
in drawing him Thackeray's pencil was guided 
by private affection. His typical soldier is not 
Colonel Newcome but Major Pendennis or Sir 
George Tufto. 



THE SOLDIER 103 

" Selfish, brutal, passionate, and a glutton, too 
incorrigibly idle and dull for any trade but this, 
in which he has distinguished himself publicly 
as a good and gallant officer and privately for 
riding races, drinking port . . . and fighting duels. 
When he dies the Times will have a quarter of a 
column about his services and battles ; four lines 
of print will be required to describe his titles and 
orders alone ; and the earth will cover one of 
the wickedest and dullest old wretches that ever 
strutted over it." 

Then there was Lieutenant-Colonel Snobley the 
dragoon, who wore "japanned boots and mous- 
taches, lisped, drawled, and left the rs out of his 
words, and was always flourishing about, and 
smoothing his lacquered whiskers with a huge 
flaming bandanna that filled the room with a 
stifling odour of musk." Or take again Henry 
Kingsley's " gigantic cavalry officer with three 
hundred pounds' worth of fripperies upon him," 
who began all his sentences by saying u Haw." 
Or, nearer our own time, take Ouida's imaginary 
Life-guardsman, li always rather more luxuriously 
housed than a young duchess," who laved his 
manly limbs in a bath filled entirely with scent, 
" in which he splashed about like a Newfoundland 
dog in a pond." Or, yet once more, the ideal 
Grenadier (in flannels), 'whom another accomplished 
authoress described as " a man dressed all in virgin 
white, like a lily, a debutante y or a cricketer." 

Soldiers of this type, and of other types closely 



104 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

related to it, prevail universally in mid-Victorian 
fiction, and it is not denied that they once existed 
in real life. Indeed, some scattered and belated 
survivals of the type are still to be recognized 
soon after Easter at TattersalFs or Sandown. 
The " Spring Captain," or officer of an inferior 
regiment — the Micky Brand of Miss Broughton's 
"Joan," — who comes up to London for a week's 
amusement, with his flowing moustache, tight 
trousers, and cover-coat — survives to remind a 
forgetful generation of an order which has passed 
away. 

A young mother once said to the present writer, 
" I am obliged to begin thinking of my boy's 
profession, for I consider that even an eldest son 
ought to have something to do. The profession 
which I should have liked for him is the army ; 
but, then, in the army there's always the risk of 
war." Poor young mother ! It is only too true. 
" There is always the risk of war," and it is a risk 
which, whatever terrors it inspires in the hearts 
of family and friends, has an irresistible fascina- 
tion for the soldier himself. The one characteristic 
which the modern soldier has in common with 
his predecessor is bravery. The most spiteful 
satirists never ventured to represent the English 
officer as a coward. Even Thackeray, perhaps 
the most anti-military of all our fiction-writers, 
concedes that "the high-born Grig rode into the 
entrenchments at Sobraon as gallantly as Corporal 
Wallop, the ex-ploughboy." 



THE SOLDIER 105 

Bravery, then, is the characteristic of the soldier 
in all ages, but in every other respect the change 
is absolute. The modern soldier is keen about 
his profession, in times of peace as well as on 
active service. It is no longer the fashion among 
soldiers to deride military knowledge, or scoff at 
scientific soldiering, or ridicule a subaltern who 
reads. The Germans have taught us better than 
that ; for English soldiers have learnt, though 
they took some time in learning it, that the German 
triumph of 1870 was a triumph of culture. Men 
like Lord Wolseley and Sir Frederick Maurice and 
Sir Neville Lyttelton know the theory of their 
profession as well as they know its practice, and 
its history as well as its theory; and it is pleasant 
as well as just to add the Duke of Connaught to 
the list. And, as in the chief places of the army, 
so in the lower. Apart from the odious neces- 
sities of endless examination, young soldiers show 
a real zeal for military knowledge. It is no longer 
"swagger" to affect ignorance or to treat the 
regiment as a Social Club. Autumn manoeuvres 
at home and abroad, lectures on tactics, books 
on military history, even the dreariest disquisitions 
at the United Service Institute on gunnery or field- 
kit, attract the young soldier of the period, who 
regards his profession as the serious business of 
his life. 

But this is only one change out of many. 
Another is the marked increase of human sym- 
pathy and fellowship between officers and men, 



106 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

accompanied — immensely to the credit of all con- 
cerned — by discipline just as accurate and inflexible 
as in the good old days when five hundred lashes 
was the recognized punishment for insubordination 
on parade. It may surprise a milder generation 
to learn that as recently as 1846 a private of 
Hussars was flogged to death at Hounslow Bar- 
racks. In the present day every detail of the 
Private Soldier's life — religion and morals, health 
and exercise, food and clothing, education and 
recreation — is the subject of his officer's constant 
and personal care. The wholesome influences 
thus brought to bear act and react upon all ranks 
and grades, and life in the army is at once a more 
scientific and a more human business than would 
have been considered possible thirty or even twenty 
years ago. 

These changes in the military type have been 
accompanied by a marked diminution in outward 
"pomp and circumstance." The splendour of 
uniform, even on state occasions, has palpably 
declined. Major Ponto would no longer have 
to pay ^347 for young Wellesley Ponto's outfit, 
and the successors of Lieutenant Hornby in 
" Ravenshoe " no longer " come pranking into 
the yard with two hundred pounds' worth of 
trappings on them." So also in private life. 
The officer whom satirists drew was always 
splendidly dressed, oiled and curled and scented 
and jewelled. Nowadays the soldier is markedly 
free from magnificence and ostentation. Dif- 



THE SOLDIER 107 

ferent regiments produce different types. The 
Guards are scrupulously well dressed but sedu- 
lously inconspicuous, and even in the Guards 
there are subdivisions. I remember to have heard 
a Grenadier say, with chilly friendliness, of a con- 
temporary in the Coldstreams, that he was "not 
a bad fellow, but rather Coldstreamy." The Rifle 
Brigade cultivate an austere simplicity of garb, 
and the Gunners carry simplicity to the point of 
untidiness. The Cavalry Regiments, from the 
Blues downwards, retain a little more of the old 
flamboyancy ; and the Cavalryman's way of walk- 
ing, if nothing else, marks him out from the rest 
of mankind. The late Cardinal Howard, Edward 
Henry Howard (1829-1892), began life as a cornet 
in the 2nd Life Guards, and all who ever saw him 
sailing up St. Peter's at a Papal pomp must have 
recognized the " cavalry roll " beneath the scarlet 
robes of a Prince of the Church. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE DOCTOR 

Quantum mutatus ab illo Aisculapio — vast in- 
deed is the difference between the doctor who 
takes our temperature to-day and the doctor 
whom Dickens drew. The change, indeed, is 
not so noticeable on the higher rungs of the 
professional ladder. In Harley Street and Gros- 
venor Street and Brook Street, where dwell the 
Medical Baronet and the F.R.S., solemn plausi- 
bility still holds its own. The great Sir Tumley 
Snuffin, who supervised the nervous system of 
Mrs. Wittitterly ; Dr. Parker Peps, who fruitlessly 
incited poor Mrs. Dombey to make an effort ; the 
genial Dr. Jobling, who was Medical Officer to the 
Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life In- 
surance Company; the anonymous physician who 
was called in to Little Nell when she fainted, 
and left the company transported with " admira- 
tion of that wisdom which tallied so closely with 
their own" — these all have their descendants and 
representatives in the Faculty of to-day. " I seek 
to impose a yoke upon you that you may be 
truly free" was the aphorism, of almost Pauline 
dignity, with which an oracle of Cavendish Square 

108 



THE DOCTOR 109 

dissuaded a dyspeptic patient from eating curried 
lobster at breakfast. The great men of the pro- 
fession maintain the grand manner and impressive 
devices of the past. Still they roll to our door 
in the landau and pair ; still they pay the timely 
compliment to the Family Practitioner, Mr. 
Pilkins, when they meet in consultation ("No 
one better qualified, I am sure," said Dr. Parker 
Peps, graciously. " Oh ! " murmured the Family 
Practitioner. " Praise from Sir Hubert Stanley ! " 
"You are good enough," returned Dr. Parker 
Peps, "to say so"). Still they recommend a 
diet at once light and nutritious ; still they pre- 
scribe change of air, gentle exercise, a complete 
freedom from anxiety, and a winter in the South 
of France. Still they assure us that there is no 
appearance of danger, and, when the patient dies, 
murmur, with the most magnificent gravity, "Of 
course, after what I said at my last visit, this 
catastrophe has not taken you by surprise." All 
this goes on every day as it has gone on from 
immemorial time, and will go on as long as 
human nature is subject to illness and amenable 
to humbug. 

But it is on the lower rungs of the profes- 
sional ladder that the great change is seen. You 
might ransack the lecture-rooms of " Bart's " and 
"Mary's" and never light on a kinsman, how- 
ever collateral, of Bob Sawyer, or Ben Allen, 
or Jack Hopkins. You might knock at every 
brass-plated door in Westminster or Southwark 



no SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

and never evoke the ghost of Dr. Haggage, who 
attended the birth of Little Dorrit in " the dirtiest 
white trowsers conceivable by mortal man, carpet 
slippers, and no visible linen." And, as in 
London, so also in the provinces. Gone for 
ever are the days when Mrs. Major Ponto re- 
garded it as a high concession to allow that 
"one may ask one's medical man to one's table, 
certainly" — when the unexpected invitation to 
Mrs. Proudie's evening party first taught "old 
Scalpen, the retired apothecary and tooth-drawer, 
to regard himself as belonging to the higher 
orders of Barchester." All those cognate views 
of the Medical Profession as something morally 
and socially ignominious belong to an unreturning 
past. The young Medico of the present day is 
a pleasant youth of gentlemanlike manners, with 
a moustache, frock coat, and patent-leather boots ; 
or, when he is off duty, a pink shirt, a parti- 
coloured suit, and tan shoes. As likely as not, 
he is a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge, and 
has brought away with him from the University 
what are called "nice tastes." He collects prints 
or china, paints in water-colours, or sings in a 
choir, and takes his blameless recreation at golf 
or lawn-tennis. Often he is a vigorous athlete ; 
takes down a cricket-team to play his college, 
or represents his hospital against the "Spurs" 
or the " Wolves." Not seldom he is a sportsman ; 
decorates his lodgings with the antlers of a stag 
which he has shot in Sutherland or helped to 



THE DOCTOR in 

hunt on Exmoor ; seeks his pastime in the 
September stubbles, or even steals a day among 
his friends' pheasants after the fateful First of 
October has recalled the medical world to London. 
As soon as he is qualified (and by some 
mysterious hocus-pocus any stripling who has 
just scraped through his last examination is 
now called u Doctor " ) he seeks an appointment 
as House Physician or House Surgeon in a 
Hospital. If he is a youth of a calculating turn, 
he does not marry a nurse, charm she never so 
wisely ; but, as soon as his appointment expires, 
joins himself to two like-minded friends, and the 
trio take a little house in some medical quarter, 
furnish it prettily, engage a decent cook, and live 
for five or ten years on a happy combination of 
hope, credit, and paternal cash. They dine out 
a good deal in medical houses, dance with the 
daughters of the heads of the profession, and 
wisely cultivate the social openings which home 
or school or college may have given them. There 
is nothing squalid, nothing derogatory, nothing 
Bohemian about all this. Not for our budding 
doctors are the joys of beer and All-Fours which 
delighted Dr. Haggage, the pork chops and brandy 
on which Bob Sawyer feasted, or the " stunning 
gin-punch " which Sam Huxter proffered to Arthur 
Pendennis. They are smart, well-mannered, and 
well-educated young men. They know a good 
glass of champagne, and entertain prettily at 
fashionable restaurants. They frequent the opera 



ii2 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

and criticize Mr. G. B. Shaw's plays, and they 
learn before they are thirty to practise that 
dignified self-restraint and that mysterious air 
of knowing a great deal more than they choose 
to say, which form so important a part of their 
professional equipment. 

And so, as the years glide on, the practice 
imperceptibly but really increases. The young 
doctor's intimate friends, indeed, expect to be 
doctored for nothing ; but each patient whom, 
for Clifton's or Caius's sake, he has so tended 
goes all round the town saying in return that 
the doctor is the best chap in the world and a 
rattling good man at his job. This report, in- 
dustriously circulated by a son in the army or 
a nephew at the Bar, soon makes its impression 
on the home. " Dr. Parker Peps is getting very 
tiresome. He won't go out at night and won't 
leave his dinner, and always is out of London 
on Sunday." Or else, "Sir Tumley Snuffin is 
really too extortionate. He was attending me 
for a cold, and he asked my eldest girl how she 
was and charged two guineas for attending her. I 
shall certainly try some one cheaper, and Jack says 
he knows a capital young doctor who will look 
after the whole household for half a guinea a 
visit." And so our friend the young doctor makes 
his mark. He is not so busy as to be obliged 
to scamp his work, nor so rich as to be indifferent 
to the art of pleasing his patients. He comes 
early and late, on Sundays and on week-days ; 



THE DOCTOR 113 

cultivates a pleasant " bedside manner," is gravely 
attentive when there is serious illness to be dealt 
with, and tactfully sympathetic to all our whims 
and crotchets. His appearance, his voice, his 
social stamp, his liberal education, all stand him 
in good stead and deepen the favourable impres- 
sion which his moderate charges first created. He 
becomes the friend as well as the adviser of one 
family after another ; always increasing his circle 
of influence ; scoring few failures and many re- 
coveries ; and so gradually establishing his name 
and fame. Then, rather suddenly, as I am 
informed, the money begins to flow in. The 
partnership is broken up. The Brass Plate bears 
one name alone. Presently it is transferred to a 
larger house ; and then a judicious alliance with 
the only daughter of Sir Grosvenor Le Draughte 
brings with it ^30,000 as well as the reversion of 
that eminent man's practice. " I am thinking," 
says Sir Grosvenor to his old patient the Dowager 
Lady Kew, "of laying down the burden of pro- 
fessional care and retiring to my roses. Of 
course it is not for me to dictate, but I think 
you would find something attractive in my son-in- 
law, Dr. Pilkins ; and he certainly is a thoroughly 
competent physician." 



H 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE ELDEST SON 

Let us hark back a little. Earlier in these pages 
we were discussing Public Schools and Universi- 
ties, the life lived in them, and the results which 
they produce. We traced the development of the 
young Englishman of the upper classes from the 
round jacket and wide collar of the Fourth 
Form to the long-sleeved gown and furry hood 
of the bourgeoning B.A. We compassionated 
the sorry lot of the academic loafer who drifts 
through Oxford or Cambridge, takes his undis- 
tinguished degree, and then has to face the 
world with no particular vocation, qualification, 
or equipment. We drew by way of contrast the 
sedulous youth who chooses his career and 
works for it, and by the time he leaves the Uni- 
versity is well on the road to Holy Orders, or 
the Bar, or Medicine, or Schoolmastering. 

Now we are to consider a more privileged 
type — the young man of great possessions, the 
youth who is born with a silver spoon in his 
mouth, the heir to entailed acres and accumulated 
Consols — in brief, The Eldest Son, whom no 

capitals are large enough to express with adequate 

ii 4 



THE ELDEST SON 115 

magnificence. It is, perhaps, only in a rather 
narrow circle that the phrase (t Eldest Son " is 
habitually used to express a kind of profession — a 
well-recognized position, prospect, and function in 
life. I believe that I mentioned in a previous 
chapter the affecting instance of a very raw under- 
graduate, the eldest of fourteen children of a Per- 
petual Curate, who, when this jargon of " eldest 
son " and " younger son " first fell on his ears, 
exclaimed with modest pride, " I am an eldest 
son" — as indeed, poor youth, he was. But for 
ears more experienced in the language of the 
world the phrase li an Eldest Son " has a definite 
and delightful meaning. 

As long ago as 1848 the young Matthew Arnold 
was misled by the voices of Revolution into writ- 
ing thus : " The hour of the hereditary peerage 
and Eldest Sonship and immense properties has, 
I am convinced, as Lamartine would say, struck." 
Amiable insanity ! Sweet but baseless illusion ! 
In these fifty and odd years many a fateful hour 
has struck on the dial of time, many a faith has 
failed, many an institution has collapsed. But 
the " hereditary peerage and Eldest Sonship 
and immense properties" flourish now as they 
flourished then ; and the end is not yet. 

The divinity which doth hedge an Eldest Son 
begins at the cradle, or before it. The bare fact 
that he is a son — not an interloping and undesir- 
able daughter — adds zest to the parental devotion. 
Like the infant Lord Farintosh, "he has but to 



n6 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

roar, and his mother and nurses are as much 
frightened as though they had heard a Libyan 
lion." As soon as the Eldest Son can walk and 
speak he begins to realize who he is and what 
he is to be. "When Papa dies all this will be 
mine," said an amiable infant to his younger 
brothers and sisters as he surveyed the terraces 
of Proudflesh Park. "I shall let you girls live 
here, and I shall make Willie the Clergyman." 
Nurses and maids, butlers and footmen, grooms 
and keepers, all conspire to encourage in the 
heir-apparent this graceful sense of his posi- 
tion and his rights. If his parents are so mis- 
guided as to bring him up at home with a Private 
Tutor, his arrogance soon becomes unbearable ; 
but, in the vast majority of instances, people 
are sensible enough to send their Eldest Son to 
school before the ambubaiarum collegia of home 
have had time to spoil him utterly. It must be 
admitted that Sydney Smith, whose experience 
related to Winchester in the second half of the 
eighteenth century, seems to have doubted the 
efficacy of the prescription. 

"A Public School is thought to be the best cure 
for the insolence of the youthful aristocracy. This 
insolence, however, is not a little increased by 
the homage of masters, and would soon meet 
with its natural check in the world. There can 
be no occasion to bring five hundred boys to- 
gether to teach a young nobleman that proper 
demeanour which he would learn so much better 



THE ELDEST SON 117 

from the first English gentleman whom he might 
think proper to insult." 

Commenting on this curious passage, one of 
the keenest of living critics, himself an Etonian, 
says : " As to the ' homage of masters/ I do not 
believe in it. The University Don, especially if he 
be a Radical, has an inexplicable delight in pupils 
with handles to their names ; but Eton masters, 
at all events, are too well acquainted with the 
commodity to appraise it above its value. Eton 
is thoroughly democratic, and a little rough hand- 
ling is not a bad thing when bestowed upon 

' Some tenth transmitter of a foolish face. 5 " 

From the Public School our Eldest Son pro- 
ceeds perhaps to the Army, perhaps to the Uni- 
versity, or perhaps travels round the world as a 
preparation for the legislative duties which a loyal 
county or an amenable borough will soon invite 
him to undertake. As to what befalls him in the 
regiment it is not for a mere civilian to speculate 
— only it may have struck the outsider who per- 
used the account of recent disturbances in the 
Guards that a very special interest was displayed 
in the case of certain heirs-apparent who had 
been subjected to discipline ; and, according to 
all reports, the claims of Eldest Sonship received 
marked consideration in the South African War. 
Of the Universities I may speak more confidently, 
and there the devotion of a Don to an Eldest 
Son resembles that of a dog to a man ; it is really 



n8 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

touching in its simple self-abasement. "Rank 
is a fact/' chirped a well-remembered Head of 
a famous College ; and by that simple axiom 
he justified a servility which disgusted even its 
recipients. "Our duty is to acquire a salu- 
tary influence over those who one day will rule 
this country." This again was a maxim of 
tutorial conduct which covered the most nauseous 
toadyism. 

But all these forms of social homage culminate 
on the day when the Eldest Son comes of age. 
The celebration of " Lothair's " majority, though 
Lord Beaconsfield contrived to make it read like 
a Comedy of High Life, was really a transcript 
from the local press. Church and State, Bishops 
and Clergy, Mayors and Corporations, grateful 
tenants and dazzled neighbours — all the grades 
and classes of the social hierarchy — prostrate 
themselves before the Eldest Son in transports 
of joy at his kindness in having consented to live 
for twenty-one years on this unworthy globe. 
When the late Lord Bute came of age the Munici- 
pality of Cardiff went in procession to Cardiff 
Castle, leading in their triumphal train a goat 
which had been carefully instructed to do its 
part in glorifying the hero of the hour. It had 
been taught with infinite labour to spell out of a 
set of ivory letters the word b-u-t-e ; and this the 
sagacious animal did, amid the loyal plaudits of 
the company. But the second stage of the per- 
formance was less successful. It was announced 



THE ELDEST SON 119 

that the goat would indicate with unerring hoof 
the figures — 200,000 — which, applied to pounds, 
were understood to represent the hero's income. 
Eager eyes were fixed on the performance, and 
the witnesses were prepared to applaud with equal 
zeal the beast's sagacity and the man's opulence ; 
but, whether as a protest against human snobbish- 
ness, or through a failure of memory, or from 
mere cussedness, the goat stopped at 200. Nor 
would the most urgent persuasions induce him 
to advance beyond that very modest figure. It 
needed but the alteration of a single word to make 
Cowper's eulogy beautifully applicable — 

" Charmed with the sight, ' The world/ I cried, 
e Shall hear of this thy deed ; 
My goat shall mortify the pride 
Of man's superior breed.'" 



CHAPTER XVIII 
THE CANDIDATE FOR PARLIAMENT 

A PAINFULLY high-minded tutor at a Public School 
was bidding good-bye to a departing pupil who 
had been a good deal fonder of play than of work. 
After some conscientious reminders of short- 
comings in the way of Iambics and Latin Prose, 
the tutor said : " However, we will let bygones 
be bygones ; only, now that you are leaving us, 
pray remember in after-life that you cannot be 
happy as long as you are idle." "Well, sir," 
replied the graceless youth, "at any rate I can 
try." And for some five or six years he was as 
good as his word, succeeded beyond his best ex- 
pectations, and had what he himself would have 
called "a cheery time." 

The youth in question belonged to that very 
numerous class who are sufficiently well-off to 
live without a profession and not rich enough to 
stand simply on their possessions or their ex- 
pectations. In short, they are not ELDEST SONS 
in the full sense of capital letters, and therefore 
Society expects them at least to make a pretence 
of doing something. Besides, if they are good 
fellows they feel honestly ashamed of ostentatious 



THE CANDIDATE FOR PARLIAMENT 121 

idleness, and therefore are compelled to look 
about for a career which shall combine the maxi- 
mum of apparent energy with the minimum of 
actual effort. To a young gentleman of this type 
the career of a Parliamentary Candidate is admir- 
ably adapted. Let us reckon up the requisite 
qualifications. First and foremost, he must be 
ready to put down a thousand pounds for neces- 
sary expenses, and a good deal more if he means 
to contest a county ; and he must be prepared to 
meet a daily stream of exactions from Registration 
Agents, Athletic Clubs, and Dissenting Chapels. 
But towards these unpleasant and too often un- 
profitable outlays assistance is sometimes forth- 
coming from Central Associations, local bigwigs, 
or good-natured relations. It is not, indeed, 
necessary but highly desirable that the Candidate 
should have a handle to his name. Mr. Gladstone 
was accustomed to aver that a Lord was worth 
a hundred of a Commoner in any competition 
for a popular vote, and it was a true though 
a humiliating testimony. Lord Magnus Charters, 
other things being equal, is an infinitely stronger 
candidate than Mr. Percy Popjoy. 

However, in the imperfect condition of our 
social system we cannot all have titles, even by 
buying them ; so the young gentleman who seeks 
a Parliamentary career often has to go before 
the electorate in the unadorned simplicity of his 
baptismal and paternal names. To have a very 
ordinary name is distinctly a hindrance, and lends 



122 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

itself to tiresome jokes about "The Only Jones" 
and the like. " Smith for Ever " is no rallying- 
cry, nor does "Vote for Brown and Empire" 
quicken the patriotic pulse. But again, on the 
other hand, a youth who is cursed with an odd 
name, such as Juggins, or Churchyard, or Snooke, 
or Rabbits, had better change it by Royal Licence 
or else keep his money in his pocket. It is sheer 
waste of time and cash to go electioneering with 
a ludicrous surname. It is obvious that to be a 
good speaker — to have a melodious and far-reach- 
ing voice, a distinct enunciation, and a fluency 
of words — is a strong qualification ; but it is 
neither so necessary nor so irresistible as the in- 
expert might suppose. I have known a torrential 
orator, who was ready to harangue at a moment's 
notice on any conceivable topic, and could have 
filled the Albert Hall without raising his voice, 
fail signally and dismally as a Radical Candidate, 
because he was always untidy, and not seldom 
dirty. We cannot all be clever, but we can all be 
clean ; and if we are wise we shall make our- 
selves not only clean but smart before we go 
electioneering. 

A few years ago Liberal politicians were weak 
enough to imagine that the really telling equip- 
ment for a democratic constituency consisted of 
a Norfolk jacket, a Scotch bonnet, and agricultural 
boots. Nay, I remember one who went canvassing 
in knickerbockers, scarlet stockings, and a jockey- 
cap. If, in addition to these aberrations of garb, 



THE CANDIDATE FOR PARLIAMENT 123 

the Candidate took a room in a slum, laid his own 
fire, and lived on sardines and cocoa, he fondly 
deemed himself irresistible. As a matter of fact, 
the constituents either detected that he was "try- 
ing it on with them " and loathed him accordingly, 
or else they simply contemned him as a harmless 
imbecile who played with politics as he might have 
played with a penny squirt. " 'Arry Gushby 
puttin' up ? What, 'im as lives at Buggins's 
Rents, close agin the Docks ? Why, oo's a-goin' 
to vote for 'im ? Gentleman, is 'e ? And lives 
at Buggins's Rents ! Why, 'e must be barmy, 
an' 'is friends ought to look after 'im." In some 
such derogatory formula as this a democratic 
elector of an East End constituency summarized 
the qualifications and prospects of a Fabian and 
a scholar who had consecrated his All to the ser- 
vice of the commonweal. 

Not so did the Radical Candidates of old time 
comport themselves. By far the most successful 
demagogue who ever found his way into Parlia- 
ment and remained a Radical was Thomas 
Slingsby Duncombe (1796-1861), M.P. for Fins- 
bury from 1834 till his death. And this was 
his appearance and method of appealing to his 
audience as described (with another name) by a 
young reporter called Charles Dickens. The 
scene is a public meeting in support of a Bill in 
Parliament, and a "grievous gentleman" has 
moved the resolution in a pathetic speech : — 

"Then a dashing politician (who had been at 



124 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

Crockford's all night and who looked something 
the worse about the eyes in consequence) came 
forward to tell his fellow-countrymen what a 
speech he meant to make in favour of the Petition 
whenever it should be presented, and how des- 
perately he meant to taunt Parliament if they 
rejected the Bill. After announcing this deter- 
mination the gentleman grew jocular ; and, as 
patent boots, lemon-coloured kid gloves, and a 
fur coat-collar assist jokes materially, there was 
immense laughter and much cheering, and, more- 
over, such a brilliant display of ladies' pocket- 
handkerchiefs as threw the grievous gentleman 
quite into the shade." 

Well, here again the type has altered in its out- 
ward form, though its inner essence remains un- 
changed. The modern Candidate for Parliament 
does not wear "lemon-coloured kid gloves" or 
a "fur coat-collar ," but if he is a wise youth he 
takes great pains with his appearance. I have 
known Candidates who hoped to carry all before 
them by aping the airs of Vikings and tossing a 
tawny mane back from their foreheads ; but such 
performances only elicit cries of " Paddy-roosky " 
or " Keep your 'air on," and the performer is left 
at the bottom of the poll. The wise Candidate 
has his hair cut short and neatly brushed. A 
well-fitting frock coat creates a favourable impres- 
sion, and a flower in the button-hole conduces 
to success. Of course a shiny tall hat is consti- 
tutionally indispensable. In every trifle of dress 



THE CANDIDATE FOR PARLIAMENT 125 

and equipage and "turnout" generally, the Candi- 
date should be as smart as his resources allow — 
and certainly not least if he is wooing a Democ- 
racy. Good manners are even more important 
than good clothes. A pleasant smile covers a 
multitude of political sins, and a Candidate who 
remembers the names of his supporters without 
prompting and does not enquire after their de- 
ceased relations is sure of a deserved popu- 
larity. 

Above all, the Candidate must place his whole 
time at the service of the constituency. Of course 
he must attend political meetings in every village 
or ward, as the case may be. He must be equally 
ready to open the Wesleyan Bazaar and to give 
prizes at the Church Sunday School. He must 
be able to kick-off at a football match, sing a 
solo at a smoking concert, play cribbage with 
Ancient Buffaloes, and drink port wine which 
bears a trade-mark on the bottle. And all this 
must be done, not with the gloomy air of a per- 
functory penance, but as if the Candidate really 
liked it — and so, as a matter of fact, he generally 
does. 

More than a hundred years ago, that sound 
Whig, William Cowper, described the incursion 
of Mr. William Wyndham Grenville, Tory Candi- 
date for Bucks, when he came canvassing to the 
tranquil town of Olney. Perhaps my readers 
will thank me for sending them back to the most 
perfect book of letters in the English language. 



126 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

"We were sitting yesterday after dinner, the 
two ladies and myself, very composedly and 
without the least apprehension of any intrusion 
in our snug parlour, when, to our unspeakable 
surprize, a mob appeared before the window, a 
smart rap was heard at the door, the boys 
halloo'd, and the maid announced Mr. Grenville. 
In a minute the yard, the kitchen, and the par- 
lour were filled. Mr. G., advancing towards me, 
shook me by the hand with a degree of cordiality 
that was extremely seducing. As soon as he and 
as many as could find chairs were seated he 
began to open the intent of his visit. I told him 
I had no vote. . . . Thus ended the conference. 
Mr. G. squeezed me by the hand again, kissed 
the ladies, and withdrew. He kissed likewise 
the maid in the kitchen, and seemed upon the 
whole a most loving, kissing, kind-hearted gentle- 
man. He is very young, genteel, and hand- 
some. . . . This town seems to be much at his 
service, and, if he be equally successful through- 
out the county, he will undoubtedly gain his 
election." 

And gain his election he did, coming in at the 
head of the poll ; and in due course became 
Prime Minister of England. I do not venture 
to anticipate quite such splendid fortunes for 
our Candidate, however successful he may be in 
his first contest ; but then, on the other hand, 
he does not have to win his way through quite 
such formidable obstacles as those which beset 



THE CANDIDATE FOR PARLIAMENT 127 

young William Grenville when first he contested 
Bucks. The locus classicus for kissing as part of 
the electioneering campaign is, of course, the 
Eatanswill Election, which may be assumed to 
have occurred about 1832. But the practice sur- 
vived that memorable contest for at least twenty 
years. In July, 1852, Matthew Arnold wrote : " I 
have been electioneering in North Lincolnshire, 
where there is a sharp contest, and been much 
amused by talking to the farmers, and seeing 
how absolutely necessary all the electioneering 
humbug of shaking hands, clapping on the back, 
kissing wives and children, still is with these 
people." So we see that these osculatory require- 
ments tend to diminish with the rolling years. 
In 1784 the Candidate had to kiss the " maid in 
the kitchen." In 1832 Mr. Slumkey u kissed 'em 
all" at Eatanswill. In 1852 Mr. R. Christopher and 
Mr. Banks-Stanhope kissed the " wives and chil- 
dren" of North Lincolnshire; and as recently as 
1880 the present writer has risked the infection 
of measles or scarlatina by embracing the infants 
of a now disfranchised borough. To-day, I be- 
lieve, the Candidate finds himself relieved from 
any form of this terrible necessity. It is all of a 
piece with the refining process which has trans- 
formed electioneering. We no longer kiss, but 
smile. We no longer bribe, but only subscribe. 
We no longer call our opponent opprobrious 
names, but merely express a polite dissent from 
the theories of our excellent friend — " if he will 



128 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

allow me to call him so." In fine, all the 
methods are changed, but the principle remains 
intact, and in 1905, just as in 1784, to be 
"young, genteel, and handsome" is the readiest 
way to the top of the poll. 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE HAPPY CANDIDATE 

The Candidate, as I described him in the last chap- 
ter, may, without discourtesy, be designated the 
Common Candidate. A rarer variety of the type 
is the Happy Candidate. There is a Words- 
worthian flavour about the title ; and, indeed, 
the Happy Warrior, as Wordsworth drew him, is 
not a more exhilarating object than the Happy 
Candidate. 

The Happy Candidate, as I conceive him — the 
right man in the right place, the round man in the 
round hole — is connected by birth and ancestry 
with the seat which he contests. His forefathers 
have lived in the County for two or three cen- 
turies. Again and again, as the family history 
shows, they have served as Knights of the Shire. 
" Welbore and the Constitution " or u Proudflesh 
and Liberty " are historic war-cries which have 
rallied the freeholders from immemorial times. 
u Who killed the Quaker ? " was the salutation 
which for two hundred years greeted every 
member of the Cowper family who showed his 

nose on the hustings at Hertford, and the answer 

129 j 



130 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

is to be found in one of the most interesting of 
the State Trials. 

But, as the Happy Candidate beautifully says, 
smiling and bowing, when allusions are made to 
these historical antecedents, 

" Those who on famous ancestry enlarge 
Produce their debt instead of their discharge," 

and the Candidate, if he is to be truly happy, must 
have qualifications of his own. His father (who 
very likely occupied the seat in early days) has 
trained his son for the business of politics. He 
has impressed upon him from his youth up that, 
although the free rights of constituencies must be 
respected, and no one may in these days call a 
seat — as the Duke of Newcastle called Newark — 
"his own," still old association counts for much. 
After all said and done, people prefer a gentleman. 
They like to know where their candidate comes 
from, and whether he has a root in the soil ; and, 
other things being equal, neighbourship counts 
for something in elections as well as in othei 
transactions of life. 

Thus the Happy Candidate is, as Burke said of 
the Duke of Bedford, " swaddled and rocked and 
dandled into a legislator," and his way is made 
straight before his face. He was born at the 
Castle or the Hall. The older electors can re- 
member his christening, and have traced his rise 
and progress from the stage of donkey-panniers to 
that of knickerbockers, a pony, and a gun. He 



THE HAPPY CANDIDATE 131 

has played cricket with the village team, gone bat- 
fowling with the keeper's boys and caught rats 
with the farmer's son. From his Public School 
he has returned at holiday seasons " grown out of 
all knowledge," promoted from a pony to a hunter, 
and an envied partner at the Tenants' Ball. As he 
emerges from Schoolboy into Undergraduate, the 
process of popularization developes. He sings in 
the choir or plays the banjo at the village concert, 
makes a genial speech at the Harvest Home, and 
begins to be talked about as a possible candi- 
date for the County Council. It is not to be 
imagined that the close scrutiny of neighbours, 
high and low, can be continued for twenty years 
without discovering the faults of character which 
may lurk under the most prepossessing exterior. 
If the youth destined for politics is known in the 
tradition of the village as a bully or a screw ; if 
he loses his temper with the beaters or swears 
at the groom or the golf-caddie ; if he habitually 
gives copper where others give silver ; if he 
forgets to thank a labourer who opens the gate 
for him, or keeps his hat on his head when he 
goes into a cottage ; the offence, though not 
audibly resented, will be remembered and 
avenged. Not such is the habit of the Happy 
Candidate. Perhaps by nature, perhaps by 
design, perhaps by a just combination of both, 
he is void of offence. He grows up amiable, 
courteous, cheerful, and " forthcoming" in his 
manner to all sorts and conditions. His " Thank 



132 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

you " and ° Good morning " have a friendly ring, 
and when he gives a tip or a Christmas-box he 
makes it seem rather a token of good-will than 
a dole or a bribe. 

And so the bright years succeed one another; 
he increases in popular favour ; the old people 
see the good qualities of his forefathers repro- 
duced ; the young people look forward to a time 
when he will have come into his kingdom and 
when his friendship will be of some substantial 
value. Good accounts of him make their way 
from Eton or Harrow, Trinity or Christ Church, 
and his slightest success, whether in scholarship 
or athletics, is made the most of in the Parish 
Magazine and thence copied into the county 
paper. He comes of age. The County rallies 
round him. His appearance is prepossessing ; 
and the amiable emotion with which he returns 
thanks for the Silver Salver or the Ormolu Clock 
draws tears from hardened eyes. His parents are 
at great pains to make it clear that they hope 
he will not marry "just yet"; that he must see 
the world a little before he settles down, and will, 
they trust, find some way of turning whatever 
powers he has to good account. By this device 
the friendly regard of the County is secured, for 
he is "anybody's game," and it will not be the 
County's fault if he looks elsewhere for a wife. 

But in the meanwhile Sir John Proudflesh is 
getting tired of the House of Commons ; his 
health is not what it was, and he must look 



THE HAPPY CANDIDATE 133 

about for a successor. Or else old Mr. Welbore 
has exhausted the patience of the Borough, and 
the wirepullers see no small advantage to be 
sucked from the eldest son of the great house. 
Lord Beaconsfield alienated the support of his 
neighbours at Wycombe because, when he 
changed his quarters from Hughenden to 
London, he used to take the cold meat with 
him, instead of leaving it for local consumption. 
The father of the Happy Candidate is wiser in 
his generation, for he knows that these misplaced 
economies have a unique power of alienating 
votes. Open-handedness has always been the 
tradition of the Castle, and its advantages are 
reaped when the time comes for choosing the 
Candidate. It were long to tell how the wire- 
pullers pull and the caucus-mongers caucus; 
how political principles and commercial ad- 
vantages are weighed and balanced ; how every 
one who has got an axe to grind or a job to 
perpetrate calculates his chances and resolves in 
favour of the candidature which will best serve 
his ends. These preliminaries adjusted, the 
popular youth who is to be the Happy Candi- 
date is invited to attend a meeting of the 
Political Association and to expound his views ; 
and, after returning satisfactory answers to ques- 
tions about agricultural rates or municipal gas- 
works, he is cordially and unanimously invited 
to contest the County or the Borough. 

And now our Candidate is happy indeed — 



i 3 4 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

happier than he has ever been since he got his 
"flannels" at Harrow or was put into the Eton 
crew — happier, probably, than he will ever be 
again. He is, say, just twenty-three ; passably 
well-looking; very nicely dressed. He is suffi- 
ciently fluent to speak without embarrassment, 
and sufficiently well informed to face the heckler 
without trembling. And he is, as Major Pen- 
dennis says, sur ses terres. He has just returned 
from a canvassing ride round the constituency, 
for in Loamshire we rather dread the motor as 
new-fangled, and reserve it for election - times. 
To-day the Happy Candidate pulls up his horse 
as he reaches the summit of Breakheart Hill, and 
gazes complacently over the landscape. His eye 
reaches across twelve miles of rich grass land, 
and every acre pays rent to his father. Just 
below him are the red walls or grey towers of 
the house where his forefathers have lived and 
died ever since Henry VIII. turned the monks 
adrift. Close by is the Village Church where he 
was christened and confirmed. In that cover he 
shot his first pheasant ; in the grassy hollow 
just below the wood he saw his first fox killed, 
and received the disgusting baptism of blood. 
In a word, the Happy Candidate is at home. 
He has no enemies, plenty of friends, and, if he 
is a good fellow, a good speaker, and a good 
sportsman, an enthusiastic band of workers and 
supporters. A beneficent fate has assigned him 
exactly the part in life which he is best fitted to 



THE HAPPY CANDIDATE 135 

play ; and the Carpet-bagger, who is imported at 
the last moment, by the opposite party, flees 
before his face. 

And now the great development has taken place. 
The Candidate is Candidate no more (till the next 
election), but a full - fledged and rejoicing M.P. 
There is probably no happier day in a young 
man's life than that on which he marches into 
the House of Commons, no longer the victim 
of arbitrary policemen, the butt of supercilious 
officials, but a member of the Commons' House 
of Parliament, part and parcel of the public life of 
England. Once sworn and seated, what does the 
M.P. do ? He flies into the Lobby or the Library, 
and writes, on paper stamped with the Royal Arms 
and the legend " House of Commons," to the 
being whom he holds dearest in the world. 

This tender duty done, the M.P. sets off on a 
tour of inspection through the byways and pur- 
lieus of the House. He feels exactly as he felt 
during his first days at Eton or Harrow, pain- 
fully conscious of ignorance, desperately anxious 
to conceal it, and eagerly on the look-out for a 
more experienced friend who will initiate him 
into what he wants to know and yet not mortify 
his new-born pride. 

In the Chamber itself he chooses his seat with 
circumspection. Whatever be the station which 
he selects, he occupies it day and night ; barely 
quitting it for his dinner, and " sitting," to use 
a homely simile, "like a hen." If he is of a 



136 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

temper at once enquiring and shy, he takes a 
modest place in the back row of seats or in the 
gallery, from which coign of vantage he can sur- 
vey the whole House, and decide at leisure the 
precise station which will suit him best. If we 
are staunch and pledged supporters of the Govern- 
ment — nephew to some one in office, or connected 
with a business which a Minister can materially 
assist, or merely anxious to be thought wise and 
statesmanlike and moderate — we sit immediately 
behind the Front Bench, "with our knees," as 
an Irish M.P. once said, "in the Prime Minister's 
back," and cheer him in an audible tone at effec- 
tive moments. If, on the other hand, we are 
more adventurously inclined ; if we wish to annoy 
our elders, and stir the dry bones of our Party, 
and make to ourselves a name as the Rising Hopes 
of Scientific Collectivism or Tory Democracy ; we 
are careful to plant ourselves below the Gangway, 
for we have already learnt that the structural in- 
terval which separates one half of the House from 
the other has a symbolic meaning of the highest 
value. Then we sit with a little band of con- 
genial spirits, who, as Lord Beaconsfield disagree- 
ably said, "dine together and think they are a 
political party " ; and then we practise that kind 
of guerilla warfare against the veterans of our 
own side which is so unspeakably disagreeable 
to the Whips and Wirepullers. We do not rebel 
too openly, for our constituencies would not stand 
it. We do not vote against the Government on 



THE HAPPY CANDIDATE 137 

a critical division, lest, like some young Radicals 
in 1894, we should be compelled to rescind our 
votes. But we wait till we know that our Leaders 
are sure of a majority, and then we make a pretty 
show of juvenile independence ; assume a fine 
air of conscientious disagreement ; elicit cheers 
from the Opposition ; and secure for our future 
speeches the "Ear of the House" — a priceless 
possession which is seldom acquired by unswerv- 
ing devotion to the interests of the Front Bench. 



CHAPTER XX 

THE MIDDLE-AGED M.P. 

By this title I signify, not the man who enters 
the House of Commons young and becomes 
middle-aged there, but him who is already middle- 
aged when he enters it. " Roughly, that is to 
say, I mean " (as a well-remembered tutor of 
Balliol used to guard himself) no man makes a 
Parliamentary success who goes into Parlia- 
ment in middle life. If any gainsayer murmurs, 
" Look at Chamberlain," I reply that there are 
exceptions to all rules, physical, mental, and 
moral. Exceptio probat regulatn. Whichever 
way you prefer to translate probat the sense is 
equally good. The instance, almost if not quite 
unique, of Mr. Chamberlain's Parliamentary suc- 
cess goes far to establish my general contention 
that if a man wishes to be a conspicuous figure 
in the House of Commons he must begin the 
business young. It is not necessary, or even 
possible, to trace in detail the Young M.P.'s 
career. "Reins lie loose, and the ways lead 
random " ; one cannot the least guess what line 
he will take. Perhaps he will set his face steadily 

towards Office, and in that case the course of his 

138 



THE MIDDLE-AGED M.P. 139 

development is familiar enough to all who have 
followed the earlier careers of Lord Curzon or 
Mr. Brodrick or Mr. Arnold-Forster or Mr. Austen 
Chamberlain. If he is successful, he blossoms in 
due time into a Minister of State, and the Minister 
of State is too majestic and too complex a type 
to be discussed in a parenthesis. If he is unsuc- 
cessful, he becomes a Candid Friend ; is peevish 
and "disgruntled" (to use a hideous but expres- 
sive word of which Mr. T. P. O'Connor is fond) ; 
cheers his dark hours by venting sarcasms on 
the party which has undervalued him, and com- 
ports himself " like a continual dropping on a 
very rainy day." Perhaps, he merely looks round 
him for a Parliament or two, finds the House 
dull, or the life unhealthy, or the constituency 
exacting, or the claims of home imperious, and 
retires into the private life from which he ought 
never to have emerged. Of this type probably was 
Thackeray's friend, Mr. Jawkins, who was "fond 
of beginning a speech to you by sa} 7 ing, 'When 
I was in the House, I,' &c. — in fact, he sat for 
Skittlebury for three weeks in the First Reformed 
Parliament, and was unseated for bribery." So 
we will not further consider the Young M.P. or 
trace his wild way, whither that leads him ; but 
concentrate our attention on that much more 
baffling personage, the man who enters Parlia- 
ment for the first time in middle life. 

Why in the world does he go there ? It cannot 
be with the hope of making money, for presum- 



140 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

ably he is pretty well off or he could not face 
the expenses, and a few of the shabby director- 
ships, to which alone an untitled M.P. can aspire, 
will not balance his subscriptions to the local 
Flower-Shows and Cricket-Clubs. He cannot hope 
for fame, which, according to Lord Beaconsfield, 
is the only intelligible motive for entering Par- 
liament ; for, unless he is most perversely foolish, 
he must realize that his oratory will never be 
reported except in the Little Peddlington Gazette, 
while in the House itself he will be a Vote and 
nothing more. For Office he is, in ninety-nine 
cases out of a hundred, hopelessly unfit. Mr. 
Gladstone, in the distant days before he knew 
Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Henry Fowler, used to 
say that it was as hopeless for a man not edu- 
cated in Parliamentary life to acquire the mental 
habits necessary for high office as for a " black- 
smith to lead the ballet at the Opera." 

Does our Middle-aged M.P. desire Parliament 
for the social advantages which it will bring him 
and his family ? Well, if so, this is a little more 
intelligible, and yet how painfully uncertain ! 
Within the limits of his own constituency, indeed, 
the M.P. has a kind of social prominence, and 
even sometimes a fictitious precedence. If Royalty 
visits the county town, the M.P. is on the plat- 
form with the Mayor, the Bishop, and the High 
Sheriff of the county. He opens the Bazaar for 
the Restoration of the Parish Church on the 
second day (the first has been assigned to the 



THE MIDDLE-AGED M.P. 141 

Lord-Lieutenant), and, even though his antece- 
dent principles have been those of the strictest 
Puritanism, he figures in the high places of the 
local Racecourse. All this is very gratifying as 
far as it goes ; but the M.P.'s wife and daughters 
desire to shine in the more conspicuous empyrean 
of London, and there success is more incalculable. 
Lord Beaconsfield understood this part of the 
political business better than most men, and here 
is his account of these social transactions : — 

" ' That dreadful Mr. Trenchard ! You know 
the reason why he has ratted ? An invitation to 
Lansdowne House for himself and his wife ! ' 

"'That Trenchard is going to Lansdowne House 
is very likely. I have met him there half a dozen 
times. He is intimate with the Lansdownes, and 
lives in the same county. But he has a horror 
of fine ladies, and there is nothing in the world 
he avoids more than what you call Society.' 

"'Well, I think I will still ask him for Wednes- 
day. If Society is not his object, what is ?' 

" ' Ah ! there is a great question for you to 
ponder over. This is a lesson for you fine ladies, 
who think you can govern the world by what 
you call " Social Influences " — asking people once 
or twice a year to an inconvenient crowd in your 
house ; now haughtily smirking, and now im- 
pertinently staring at them ; and flattering your- 
selves all the while that to have the occasional 
privilege of entering your saloons and the periodi- 
cal experience of your insolent recognition is to 



142 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

be a reward for great exertions, or, if necessary, 
an inducement to infamous tergiversation.' " 

In spite of this iconoclastic sentence, " Social 
Influences" still count for much in politics, as 
the wirepullers of the Primrose League and the 
Liberal Social Council are well aware. But 
perhaps our M.P. wants neither money nor fame, 
neither office nor eminence. In spite of the 
cynics and the satirists, it is at least possible that 
he enters Parliament from motives purely disin- 
terested. He believes that a seat in the House is 
a kind of pulpit from which he can deliver with 
effect some politic or economic doctrine in which 
he believes. He wishes to promote the cause of 
Peace, or Temperance, or Social Morality. He 
honestly respects his political leader, and considers 
it an honour and a satisfaction to support him. 
He is, and perhaps has been from boyhood, a 
devoted member of his political party. He has 
fought for it, worked for it, endured insult and 
abuse for it, and has spent money on it which 
he could ill afford to lose. In a word, he enters 
Parliament for the Cause ; and, whether his time 
in Parliament is long or short, he always looks 
back to it as to the Golden Age. 

" Not Heaven itself upon the past hath power, 
But what has been has been, and I have had my hour." 

Yes, he has had his hour — when, by the goodwill 
of his rural neighbours or his fellow-townsmen, 
he represented the political principles in which 



THE MIDDLE-AGED M.P. 143 

he and they believed, on the most illustrious stage 
accessible to an English citizen. In truth, although 
we may be a little inclined to make fun of his 
seriousness and his self-importance, the Middle- 
aged M.P. is the backbone of his party. As a 
rule, his services are unrecognized and unrewarded ; 
but it must be admitted that he sometimes " founds 
a family," and dies a Baronet. 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE LABOUR-MEMBER 1 

Now, just when the Trade Unions Congress has 
been in session, and when every publicist is specu- 
lating on the amount and kind of influence which 
will be exercised by Labour in the House of Com- 
mons, an estimate of the men who will exercise 
it is not out of place. In dealing, whether by 
way of praise or of blame, with personal charac- 
teristics, it behoves one to walk warily ; and, in 
order that I may keep myself void of all offence, 
I shall discuss types rather than persons, and shall 
sedulously abstain from the use of proper names. 
If I violate my promise the instant I have made 
it, and name, with high honour and admiration, 
my friend Mr. Thomas Burt, M.P., I must be 
pardoned on the score of senile egotism ; for my 
earliest associations with Mr. Burt made an in- 
delible and in some ways a ludicrous impression 
on my youthful mind. 

Mr. Burt's predecessor in the representation of 
Morpeth was Sir George Grey (1799-1882), grand- 
father of the present Sir Edward Grey, and a 
perfect representative of those aristocratic Whigs 
who ruled England, as by Divine Right, during 

1 This chapter was written some months before the General Election 

of 1906. 

144 



THE LABOUR-MEMBER 145 

the first thirty years of Queen Victoria's reign. 
A Whig sate unchallenged for Morpeth from 
1832 to 1874. All the Whigs were friends, and 
most of them relations. They took a kindly 
interest in one another's families ; and, when an 
aged Whig thought of retiring from Parliament, 
he looked about for a younger Whig to take his 
place. Tories might sneer about the "Sacred 
Circle of the Great-Grand-Motherhood," and en- 
vious Radicals might murmur against this dynastic 
sway ; but it was a very comfortable arrangement 
for the Whigs, and the other people — including 
the constituents — did not matter. I myself am a 
Whig born and bred ; and it fell out that, when 
I was a boy at Harrow, I won a prize for an 
Essay on Parliamentary Oratory. One of the 
" Young Lions of the Daily Telegraph " was 
present, in the way of business, at the Speech- 
day on which this essay was crowned, and he 
filled up his column for next morning's paper 
with some " magnificent roaring," as Matthew 
Arnold called it, about the youthful author, his 
historic name, and his Parliamentary future. This 
unexpected eulogy brought my poor essay into 
greater prominence than generally befalls a 
schoolboy's exercise ; it fell under the notice of 
Sir George Grey, who, full of Whiggery and 
kindliness, designated the essayist as his successor 
at Morpeth. He said that he was getting old; 
that he should not stand many more contests ; 
but the electors at Morpeth were absolutely loyal 

K 



146 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

to him, and that they would choose any candidate 
whom he might recommend. Here was a rosy 
prospect. The essayist had only to complete his 
time at Harrow, spend four years more or less 
profitably at Oxford, and then step into an abso- 
lutely safe seat and keep it for life. But alas for 
the vanity of human hopes and the knock-kneed 
calculations of Parliamentary managers ! Just a 
year after this delightful plan was broached, the 
Liberals of Morpeth notified to their respected 
representative that he had better retire at the 
next Dissolution, and that they had chosen a 
working miner — Thomas Burt by name — as the 
next Liberal candidate. Mr. Gladstone, confined 
to bed by a bad cold, dissolved the Parliament of 
1868 in a fit of temper. Sir George Grey retired 
into private life, and Morpeth secured in my 
friend Mr. Burt one of the most capable repre- 
sentatives and one of the truest gentlemen whom 
I have had the happiness to encounter in public 
life. 

So much for the Father of the Labour Party in 
Parliament. When I come to describe the Family, 
I take refuge in generalizations. In former days I 
have known, on both sides of the House, the 
Labour-Member who had made money, and 
enjoyed it, wore a velvet-collar and drank cham- 
pagne. Though he had climbed into the House 
by the ladder of Labour, he soon forgot his 
method of access, and became absorbed in one 
or other of the political parties. I rather fancy 



THE LABOUR-MEMBER 147 

that this type has disappeared, and I cannot pro- 
fess to deplore it. Then there was the Labour- 
Member who relied on his oratorical powers, and 
he often had a considerable experience of elec- 
tioneering rebuffs before he learned that electors 
require something more than flummery. A de- 
mocrat of this type once attempted to storm a 
pocket-borough where the electors, like some 
whom Gibbon knew, " were commonly of the same 
opinion as" the noble lord who owned their houses. 
To these the candidate addressed himself in his 
most demagogic vein — " Working men of Little 
Peddlington, I am a working man like yourselves. 
If you return me, I will serve you with voice and 
vote ; but / (with immensely sarcastic emphasis) — 
I can't send you game or blankets, seed-potatoes 
in spring or coals at Christmas." Whereupon a 
cruel voice interjected from the gallery : " Then 
you won't do here, old chap. You'd better try 
somewhere else." The orator, who, after all, was 
a sensible fellow, took the hint, and he sits for 
the borough of Buncombe to this hour. A strik- 
ing contrast to the type which I have just de- 
scribed is the Silent Labour-Member. There are 
plenty of such men, but few people realize them. 
They are quiet, thoughtful, intelligent men ; know- 
ing thoroughly what they profess to know, very 
impatient of pretentious ignorance, and excellently 
qualified to expose it ; yet condemned by some 
painful self-mistrust, or by an incapacity to catch 
the ear of the House, to sit session after session 



148 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

in unrecognized silence, while the noisy, fluent 
men with big voices and boundless self-esteem 
pose, and are accepted, as the inspired Oracles of 
Labour. But now and then a constituency is lucky 
enough to secure a representative who combines a 
voice with a head and a heart, and then the com- 
bination is irresistible. The House of Commons 
always listens to a man who speaks, however 
haltingly, out of his own experience. The dullest 
subjects are tolerated if the man who is expound- 
ing them is unmistakably imparting knowledge 
and not airing vanity ; and the more remote the 
experience, the more cordial the hearing. A 
Labour M.P. who can describe, from his own 
knowledge, the miseries of overcrowding, scanty 
work, adulterated food, and defective sanitation 
may rely on an audience as sympathetic and 
interest as keen as Gladstone or Bright ever 
commanded. If, in addition to having something 
to say, the Member knows how to say it, the 
effect of course is heightened. In days gone by 
the Labour-Member's style inclined too much 
to flapdoodle and fustian, and to those commo- 
dities the House is never kind. But of late years 
popular orators have acquired a more direct and 
unpretentious method ; they have cast off some of 
that deadly earnestness about things indifferent 
which used to tear their passion to tatters ; and, 
in at least one or two instances, they have learned 
to season their appeals to humanity and justice 
with the saving salt of genuine humour. It will 



THE LABOUR-MEMBER 149 

not, I hope, be thought an impertinence if I add 
that in point of dignified, orderly, and courteous 
behaviour the Labour-Members of all types and 
sorts set an example which the best-born men 
in Parliament would do well, but sometimes 
forget, to follow. 

Some of my best friends in public and political 
life have been Labour M.P.'s and those who return 
them. I rejoice in the prospect that their num- 
ber will be greatly increased in the next Parlia- 
ment, and I earnestly hope that they will bring all 
the pressure which they can command to bear on 
any Administration which plays false to the cause 
of Labour. But yet I would venture to submit 
that loyalty to Labour is not the all-in-all of politics, 
and that a Labour candidate who intends to sup- 
port a Tory Government cannot, in reason or 
conscience, appeal for the votes of men whose 
Liberalism is as dear to them as life itself. 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE WHIG 

From the Labour-Member to the Whig is an 
abrupt transition. Yet with both I have had 
intimate relations, and they have this much in 
common, that both are rare. The most salient 
difference is that the Whig is tending rapidly 
towards extinction ; whereas the Labour-Member 
is multiplying and increasing at a rate which 
seems to assure him a commanding influence in 
the next House of Commons. Of the Labour- 
Member we have already spoken ; let us spend 
a few minutes in investigating the Whig before 
he goes hence and is no more seen. In order 
to discuss the subject with scientific accuracy, it 
would be necessary to plunge into Scottish 
etymology, to ransack Hume, to revive the 
shadowy memories of the Meal-Tub Plot, and 
to re-enact the Revolution of 1688. But in the 
narrow limits of a chapter one cannot afford 
thus to "begin with the Deluge," and it will 
serve our purpose if we choose as our starting- 
point the year 171 2, when John, first Earl Gower, 
took to wife Lady Evelyn Pierrepont and be- 
came the progenitor of all the Gowers, Caven- 



THE WHIG 151 

dishes, Howards, Grosvenors, Campbells, and 
Russells who walk on the face of the earth. So 
widely ramified were the descendants of this 
Lord Gower, and yet so closely allied by marriage, 
that when Lord John Russell became Prime 
Minister in 1846 he was publicly charged with 
having formed a Government of his own rela- 
tions ; and, like Lord Salisbury in 1900, he 
found it better not to reply to the charge. Mr. 
Gladstone once laid it down that "a man not 
born a Liberal may become a Liberal, but to be 
a Whig he must be a born Whig," and he cited 
Lord Macaulay as an almost unique exception ; 
he certainly might have added Sir William Har- 
court, and perhaps Lord Rosebery. Of Macaulay, 
Mr. Gladstone said that, though born a Tory, 
he had so assimilated the spirit of the Whigs 
that he " constantly presented the aspect of that 
well-marked class of politicians." 

Well-marked. I pause on the phrase, and 
proceed to examine the marks by which a Whig 
may or might be distinguished from other political 
types. For an unflattering estimate we cannot 
do better than turn to Lord Beaconsfield, who, 
ere yet he had determined whether it would pay 
best to be a Radical or a Tory, had some un- 
pleasant contact with Whiggery as represented 
in the politics of High Wycombe. This is his 
description of the ideal Whig — "a haughty Peer, 
proud of his order, prouder of his party, freezing 
with arrogant reserve and condescending polite- 



152 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

ness," and, taking the Whig party as a whole, 
the Carpet-bagger of 1832 — the Prime Minister of 
1868 — described them not inaptly. No people on 
earth had less sympathy with the idea of politi- 
cal or social Equality. They were, to borrow 
a phrase of Mr. Gladstone's from another con- 
nexion, " innate and confirmed Inequalitarians." 
But, though the great Whigs hated Equality, they 
loved Freedom. Nothing in political history is 
finer than the courageous consistency with which 
they led and fostered the cause of civil liberty 
at a time when such a course meant Royal 
disfavour, social ostracism, and perpetual ex- 
clusion from profit and power. The men of 
1832 were worthy descendants of the men of 
1688. It was, I suppose, partly on account of 
this hereditary connexion with the movement 
which dethroned James II. and established Parlia- 
mentary government, that the Whigs regarded 
themselves as in a special sense the guardians 
of "The Constitution" (which they always pro- 
nounced, like Major Pendennis, " Constitution "). 
The aged dukes who cowered over the fire at 
Brooks's, the wide-acred squires who toasted 
"The Principles of 1688" at the Fox Club, 
believed that their judgment on a question of 
constitutional propriety was final. I can well 
remember the wrath which shook their palsied 
frames when the Conservatives first began to 
call themselves the Constitutional Party. " Mind," 
said a Whig father to his son, "however Radical 



THE WHIG 153 

your Address is, you must say that you come 
forward on the Constitutional side. Your an- 
cestors helped to make the Constitution under 
which we have the happiness to live, and the 

d d Tories have been trying for two hundred 

years to unmake it." That " Constitutional " note 
was heard in every utterance of the Whigs. Sir 
Theodore Martin in his "Life of the Prince 
Consort" darkened counsel by words without 
knowledge about the relations between the Crown 
and the Cabinet (and was riddled by the letters 
of " Verax "), and the Whigs said, " ' Bon Gaultier's ' 
Ballads were very good fun, but he doesn't under- 
stand the Constitution." Lord Beaconsfield's 
unpardonable offence was that he was trying to 
obliterate Lord Melbourne's lessons of Constitu- 
tional government from the Royal mind and to 
substitute the fantasies of an Oriental despotism. 
At the crisis of Easter, 1880, when the Liberal 
party was chafing at the long delay in calling 
Mr. Gladstone to the Sovereign's counsels, the 
Whigs were loud in praise of Her Majesty's 
Constitutional exactness in sending first for Lord 
Hartington and then for Lord Granville. In a 
word, the Constitution, as established in 1688 and 
developed by a century and a half of Parlia- 
mentary government, was the supreme object of 
Whig worship, and the slightest departure from 
it was both heresy and treason. 

The Constitution of 1688 was essentially tolerant 
in the sphere of religion, and the Whigs were 



154 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

sincere friends to religious freedom both in 
thought and practice. They would all have made 
Sydney Smith's motto their own — H Pull down 
no man's altar ; punish no man's prayer." But 
in religion, as well as in politics and social life, 
they were Inequalitarians. The Church of Eng- 
land as by law established was an institution on 
which they set prodigious store, and, though they 
would not for the world have compelled any one 
to conform or have persecuted him for not con- 
forming, still they were strong advocates for the 
principle of Establishment. Not that their view 
of the Church was a very exalted one. To them 
it was practically a subdivision of the Home 
Department for the promotion of morals, and 
as absolutely subject to Parliament as any Court 
of Justice or Board of Administration. The idea 
of the Church as a spiritual society, with rights, 
powers, and duties irrespective of anything that 
law can give or take away, was abhorrent to the 
Whigs. They were friendly enough to episcopal 
palaces and spiritual peerages, to purple coats 
and mitred coaches ; but they ridiculed the 
Church's claim to a separate life and a divine 
commission, and did their best to repress it 
when expressed in action. An eminent Whig 
peer once said to the present writer : " I am 
utterly opposed to Disestablishment, and I will 
tell you why. As long as the Church is estab- 
lished we can kick the parsons. But once dis- 
establish it and, begad ! they will kick us." This 



THE WHIG 155 

is the Whig doctrine of Church and State in a 
nutshell. 

The Whigs were always a cultured class, accord- 
ing to the standard of culture in their day. They 
prided themselves on openness of mind, and readi- 
ness to move with the times in all speculations 
which did not threaten the Idol set up in 1688. 
Thus they were early and eager converts to 
Political Economy, and one of their characteristics 
was a tendency to regard that highly disputable 
science as a new revelation from Sinai. They 
fastened on some parrot-like phrase, such as 
" Freedom of Contract," and interjected it in every 
civil controversy, as though it contained the clue 
to all social and political perplexities. This it 
was which made the Whigs, as a class, so hope- 
lessly obstructive on all those questions of agra- 
rian or urban reform where Humanity comes 
into conflict with Privilege — the interests of the 
Tenant with the interests of the Landlord. Again, 
the Whigs thought it due to their character as 
Political Economists to be bitterly hostile to all 
attempts, however tentative, in the direction of 
Collectivism. The Whig doctrine would limit the 
function of the State to the preservation of life 
and property and the enforcement of contracts. 
All that pertains to the moral and material better- 
ment of the helpless masses the Whigs would 
serenely abandon to the operation of economic 
law. "Tell me," said Cardinal Manning to a 
politician of this type, "how long it takes your 



156 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

law of Demand and Supply to work out in a 
given case of a labourer and his labour, and I 
will tell you how long it takes one of my poor 
Irishmen down in Rotherhithe to starve." 

In casting my eye over the foregoing para- 
graphs I see that I have persistently spoken of 
the Whigs in the past tense. The tense expresses 
the fact. The individual Whig, though rare, 
still exists ; but the Whig Party has perished. 
Some few Whigs, like Lord Spencer and Mr. 
Robert Spencer, Sir Edward Grey, and one or 
two of the Russells, have followed their Whiggish 
tradition to its natural development in live and 
active Liberalism. The large majority have been 
swallowed up by Toryism, into which a good 
many of them descended by the treacherous path 
of Liberal Unionism. Quite lately two or three 
have been recalled to a sense of their danger by 
the insult offered to Political Economy in the 
name of Fiscal Reform. But, whether trans- 
formed into Toryism or Liberalism, Whiggery 
as a political party has ceased to be. It has 
died, not indeed unhonoured, but unwept. It 
had lived its life and had done its work. As 
long as it led the van of Progress and Freedom, 
it had a unique glory and a distinctive mission. 
As soon as it abandoned that function of leader- 
ship, it ceased to have any proper reason for 
existing. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE PARTY HACK 

Our last two types — the Labour-Member and the 
Whig — have, among marked diversities, this much 
in common, that neither of them is a Party Hack. 
It was, indeed, a characteristic of the true-bred 
Whig (at any rate after Mr. Gladstone had begun 
to lead the Liberal party) that the Whips could 
never depend upon his vote, and that at a critical 
moment in the battle of debate he would turn 
round and fire his blunderbuss straight in his 
leader's face. His favourite theme was a protest, 
in season and out of season, against the theory 
that a Member of Parliament is a " Delegate." 
His special pose was that of a manly independ- 
ence, and he belonged by instinct to that most 
repellent of all sects, "The Society of Candid 
Friends." Of course the Labour-Member does 
not even profess allegiance to a political party. 
He is returned in the interests of Labour, and, 
whatever measures seem most conducive to the 
objects which Labour has at heart, those he will 
support, whether the Front Bench smile on them 
or frown. Such men are the despair of the local 

Caucus and break the hearts of Whips. 

157 



158 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

The Party Hack is a very different kind of 
politician ; and, since a serene impartiality is the 
note of these silhouettes, let me hasten to say 
that he may be either a Liberal or a Conservative. 
He is perhaps more often found on the Con- 
servative side, because the Liberal party, by its 
very essence and genius, encourages independent 
thought, and in politics independent thought some- 
times, though not always, issues in independent 
action. Lord Beaconsfield, who knew the House 
of Commons so well that his Parliamentary por- 
traits have a perennial value, described the Party 
Hack of days gone by in terms so accurate that 
even now they scarcely need amendment. 

" There was the true political adventurer, who 
with dull desperation had stuck at nothing, had 
never neglected a three-lined Whip, had been pre- 
sent at every division, never spoke when he was 
asked to be silent, and was always ready on any 
subject when they wanted him to open his mouth ; 
who had treated his leaders with servility, even 
behind their backs, and was happy for the day 
if a Secretary of State nodded to him,; and who 
had not only discountenanced discontent in the 
party, but had regularly reported in strict con- 
fidence every instance of insubordination which 
came to his knowledge." Yet, when a change is 
made in the Administration and the offices are 
reshuffled, this true type of the Party Hack finds 
himself left out in the cold, and realizes all too 
late that il being a slave and a sneak was an in- 



THE PARTY HACK 159 

sufficient qualification for office." And then, the 
mordant satirist of Parliamentary life adds, with 
a touch of unctuous compassion, " Poor fellow ! 
half the industry he had wasted on his cheerless 
craft might have made his fortune in some decent 
trade." 

The Party Hack enters Parliament from various 
motives and by the most mysterious means. If 
he is young and ambitious, he may, like the gentle- 
man whom Lord Beaconsfield described, have an 
eye to office, and in the present day he has a 
better chance of success than in that remote 
period when Family and Connexion counted for 
so much in Parliamentary arrangement. Perhaps 
he has some financial interest to serve — has put 
some money in a dock, or a brewery, or an 
electric trust, and thinks that as an M.P. he will 
have profitable opportunities of lobbying and log- 
rolling. Perhaps, like Diotrephes, he loveth to 
have the pre-eminence in his native place, and 
looks forward to the day when, in recognition of 
his skill in piloting a water-bill or a railway- 
scheme, the statue of "Joseph Buggins, Esq., 
M.P. for this Borough" will occupy a command- 
ing situation in the Market Square or on the 
Quay. Perhaps he is a journalist; wires a daily 
Letter, full of personalities and flimflams, to the 
New York Sewer and knows that the House of 
Commons is the hotbed of social gossip. Per- 
haps — and this is no imaginary case — he seeks to 
enrich himself by matrimonial means, and believes 



160 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

that the prospect of being invited to evening parties 
in Downing Street or Belgrave Square will attract 
the young lady with a little money. 

As his motives for entering Parliament are 
various, so are his methods of entering it mys- 
terious. Brown, Jones, and Robinson are three 
substantial citizens of Drumble. All are good 
men and true, all are pretty well off, all are 
terribly respectable, all are fond of talking, and 
all have their axes to grind. And yet Brown 
gets himself selected as the candidate for East 
Drumble at the next election, and Jones and 
Robinson are left lamenting, to grind their axes 
as well as they may on the municipal, instead of 
the Parliamentary, grindstone. Why Brown is 
preferred is a mystery, and, if you want to have 
it solved, you must ask the families of Jones and 
Robinson. A manly pride restrains those good 
men from themselves belittling their successful 
rival ; but Mrs. Jones and the Misses Robinson 
are under no such restrictions. From them you 
will learn that Brown owes his success to the fact 
that he is the Brewer's Friend ; or that he spends 
his money in the Borough, instead of dealing at 
Harrods' or the Stores ; or that he has lent money 
to the principal wirepuller and hinted at repay- 
ment in case he was not selected by the Caucus. 
So, again, when the election has taken place and 
the Selected Candidate has become the Elected 
Member, similar theories of his success are widely 
current. The Solicitors' Firm to which Brown 



THE PARTY HACK 161 

belongs had a good deal to do with the new 
Register. For six months before the election 
Brown was singing comic songs at Friendly Leads 
in the lowest pothouses. On the eve of the Poll 
Brown went round the slums, promising every 
voter he met a quart of ale directly after the 
Declaration and a fat goose at Christmas. 

Which of these stories is true, or whether any 
of them is or all of them are, it is not for me 
to decide. I only know that Brown finds his 
way into the House of Commons and becomes 
a Party Hack. To keep his seat is the supreme 
object of his existence, and he knows well enough 
that political parties are, as a rule, unforgiving. 
You are returned as a Liberal or as a Conserva- 
tive, and, if you wobble or rat or play the Candid 
Friend, you are only too likely to find yourself cast 
at the next election. It is impossible to please 
all sections of your constituents (even though, like 
a friend of my own, you subscribe equally to the 
Liberation Society and the Church Defence Insti- 
tution, on the ground that both societies circulate 
valuable information on a disputed point); and, 
as you cannot please all, the best way is to follow 
your Leader, even though he leads you into the 
most uncomfortable places. Then, however dis- 
pleasing your votes may have been to the Temper- 
ance Party or "the Trade," the employers or the 
artisans, you can always say, in reply to hecklers 
at the annual meeting of the Association, "Well, 
gentlemen, you returned me as a follower of Mr. 

L 



162 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

Balfour (or Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman), and 
my best reply to my critics is to say that I have 

STUCK TO HIM THROUGH THICK AND THIN."— (Loud 

applause, during which the Hon. Member resumed 
his seat.) "Vote for Lord Beaconsfield and the 
Empire" was a popular and non-committing cry 
in 1880. " Chamberlain and Three Acres and a 
Cow" rent the skies in 1885. "Gladstone and 
the Union of Hearts" in 1886 was rather a damp 
squib, and was soon replaced by the wiser vague- 
ness of " Gladstone and no Crotchets " and " We'll 
all go solid for the Grand Old Man." 

The worst of these unqualified professions of 
loyalty to Leaders whose counsels we do not 
share is that they sometimes land us in unlooked- 
for dangers. Lord Shaftesbury wrote in 1884, 
"When Gladstone runs down a steep place, his 
majority, like the pigs in Scripture, but hoping 
for a better issue, will go with him, roaring in 
grunts of exultation." The prophecy was made 
good exactly a year later, when the Party Hack 
on the Liberal side had suddenly to become 
enthusiastic in favour of Home Rule, which down 
to that time he had been taught to denounce and 
decry. But, after all, he fared no worse than 
the Party Hack on the Tory side, who in 1867 
had been forced to embrace a democratic exten- 
sion of the suffrage because Lord Derby and Mr. 
Disraeli had resolved to strengthen their pre- 
carious hold on office by "Dishing the Whigs." 
In Parliamentary life the way of the transgressor 



THE PARTY HACK 163 

is hard, but it is sometimes glorious. Mr. Glad- 
stone, when a young Tory Minister, resigned office 
sooner than be party to an ecclesiastical policy 
which he had denounced. Mr. Bright twice over 
broke from his party in order to defy the national 
passion for unrighteous war. Mr. Chamberlain 
risked all to defeat Home Rule ; Mr. Cowen and 
Mr. Forster, to defy the Caucus. The way of 
the Party Hack is not glorious, but neither is it 
hard. It is comfortable and easygoing ; and, 
though ignominious, it is safe. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

THE OFFICIAL M.P. 

Our collection of Parliamentary Silhouettes would 
be glaringly incomplete if we were to omit the 
Official M.P. This type is quite distinct. Many 
are called to Parliamentary life, but few chosen 
for office. Most M.P.'s never think of it. Of 
course the notion of attaining it is one among the 
many different motives which impel men to enter 
the House of Commons ; but it is the motive of 
comparatively few, and even of those few the 
majority are foredoomed to disappointment. It 
is one of the ironies of Parliamentary life that 
many men, apparently well qualified for the func- 
tion of governance, spend all their days in irre- 
sponsibility and free-lanceship ; whereas others, 
even conspicuously deficient in resource, initiative, 
and decision, are forced almost against their will 
into the highest posts of administration. " Nature 
intended me for a grazier," said Lord Althorp, 
who steered the Reform Bill of 1832, "and fate 
has made me a statesman." An eminent politician 
still living, though no longer in the House of 
Commons, was driven almost by main force into 

public life, in the desperate hope that it might 

164 



THE OFFICIAL M.P. 165 

wean him from gambling, and, when he showed 
signs of a tendency to return to his former pursuits, 
he was kept steady by the offer of a place in the 
Cabinet. Of contemporary statesmen who owe 
their official stations to anything in the world 
except capacity it would be invidious to speak in 
detail. But, when one sees a man of high posi- 
tion and great estate — a man, as the phrase is, 
with a heavy stake in the country — neglecting his 
proper business, and sacrificing his leisure and 
forsaking his home, in order to bury himself in 
the pigeon-holes and despatch-boxes of the Post- 
office or the Education Department, one is driven 
to ask, " Is this man's motive Patriotism or 
Pomposity ? — a self-sacrificing desire to serve the 
State, or an insane conviction that he is indis- 
pensable to the public weal ? " 

However, after all said and done, the men who 
have official greatness thrust upon them are com- 
paratively few; the majority of office-holders have 
achieved it, and that by no shady or ambiguous 
arts, but by consistent purpose, careful training, 
and hard work in the House and in the con- 
stituencies. The young M.P. who means office gets 
up his facts ; if possible makes some one subject 
his own ; exercises tact and discretion about the 
times and circumstances in which he will address 
the House. He does not flog the dead horse of 
some threadbare contention, or discharge a bottled 
oration on a jaded House just when every one 
is howling for a division. To his political Leader 



1 66 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

he shows a sincere but self-respecting loyalty ; 
to his brother-members, on both sides, courtesy, 
geniality, and good temper ; and to the Whips a 
friendly independence which makes them careful 
not to take liberties with him or his vote. In fine, 
he takes his M.P.-ship as seriously as he would 
take any other profession ; works steadily towards 
a definite end ; and, if he has luck and patience, 
sooner or later attains it. Seventy years have 
passed since Sir Robert Peel was " summoned 
from Rome to govern England," and the scene 
which Lord Beaconsfield described in "Coningsby " 
will be reproduced with absolute fidelity as soon 
as King Edward VII. lays his commands on 
Lord Spencer or Sir Henry Campbell-Banner- 
man. The scene is laid at a political party, and 
these were some of the guests. They were — 

" Middle-aged aspirants who had lost their 
seats, but flattered themselves that they had done 
something for the party in the interval by 
spending nothing but their breath in fighting 
hopeless boroughs, or publishing pamphlets which 
really produced less effect than chalking the 
walls. Light as air and proud as a young 
peacock tripped a gentleman who had contrived 
to keep his seat in a Parliament where he had 
done nothing, but thought that an Under-Secre- 
taryship was now secure, especially as he was the 
son of a noble lord who had also in a public 
capacity plundered and blundered in the good 
old days. The only grave countenance that was 



THE OFFICIAL M.P. 167 

occasionally ushered into the room belonged to 
some individual whose destiny was not in doubt, 
and who was already practising the official air 
that was in future to repress the familiarity of 
his former fellow-strugglers." 

When once our aspirant to office has attained 
his desire, he must be prepared to live laborious 
days, and nights as well. As he goes to bed dog- 
tired, he probably rises late ; and, as soon as break- 
fast is over, he must hurry to his office. There 
he grinds for three hours, settling departmental 
business, preparing answers to be given in the 
House of Commons, and directing the replies to 
an illimitable mass of official correspondence. At 
two he must be in his place in the House ; and, 
although the unofficial butterfly flits hither and 
thither as the fancy for work or pleasure takes 
him, the official bee must ply his daily task either 
in the House itself or in some secret chamber 
in its purlieus. The beneficent institution of the 
"week-end," imported by Mr. Balfour from 
Lancashire, saves the statesman of the present 
day from physical destruction ; but for five 
days in the week he works as hard as it is 
possible for a man to work, amid surroundings 
which are sometimes exciting, often tedious, and 
never salubrious. When he lays his head on his 
blameless pillow, any time after 1 A.M., he may 
go to sleep with the comfortable consciousness 
that he has done a fair day's work for a not 
exorbitant remuneration. 



168 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

Remuneration, in the sense of salary, is not the 
sole or the chief reward of official service. Lord 
Beaconsfield once said, in a letter to a friend 
of my own, that what really made high office 
agreeable was the possession of unshared know- 
ledge, and the amusement to be derived from the 
ignorant chatter of those among whom you move. 
Mr. Gladstone, who also loved office, took, as was 
natural, a loftier view of it. u The desire for office," 
he said, "is the desire of ardent minds for a 
larger space and scope within which to serve the 
country, and for access to the command of that 
powerful machinery for information and practice 
which the public departments supply." But there 
are lesser rewards, in the way of recognition and 
station and a kind of social pre-eminence, which 
are not without their attractions for the official 
mind. The Bellows-Menders' Company (with 
which Thackeray, disguised as "Mr.. Spec," dined 
on a memorable occasion) still exists, though it 
bears another name, and the Secretary of the 
Tape and Sealing-wax Office is never unrepre- 
sented in the administrative hierarchy. At the 
hospitable board of the Bellows-Menders, the 
Secretary of that admirable office returned thanks 
for the toast of His Majesty's Ministers. He was, 
he said, but a humble — the humblest — member of 
that body. The suffrages which his colleagues 
had received from the nation were gratifying, but 
the most gratifying testimonial of all was the 
approval of the Bellows-Menders' Company. — 



THE OFFICIAL M.P. 169 

(Immense applause.) Yes, among the most 
enlightened of the mighty Corporations of the 
City, the most enlightened was the Bellows- 
Menders. Yes, he might say, in consonance with 
their felicitous motto and in defiance of their 
traducers, Afflavit Veritas et dissipati sunt — 
(Enormous applause.) Yes, the thanks and pride 
that were boiling with emotion in his breast 
trembled to find utterance on his lips. Yes, the 
proudest moment of his life, the crown of his 
ambition, the meed of his early hopes and 
struggles and aspirations, was at that moment 
won in the approbation of the Bellows-Menders. 
In the distant year 1883 the humble individual 
who pens these lines found himself making some- 
thing very like that peroration. 



CHAPTER XXV 

THE AUTHOR 

Horace Walpole wrote, with reference to one 
of the young sprigs of quality to whom he played 
the part of literary sponsor, u He thinks nothing 
so charming as Authors, and to be one." The 
second part of the sentence need not be contro- 
verted. Authorship, even on the humblest scale, 
has undeniable charms. Not long ago, I was 
present at a literary banquet, where a good deal 
of flummery was uttered by after-dinner speakers 
about the glories of Literature, the splendours of 
Fame, and the baseness of Lucre. We were all a 
good deal impressed by these fine sentiments, and 
began to think that authors must be the most high- 
souled set of men in the world ; when we were 
suddenly recalled to reality and common-sense 
by a vigorous oration from Mr. Zangwill. He 
said that he had lately met a lady who, on hearing 
his name, exclaimed, " Oh ! Mr. Zangwill, I admire 
the ' Children of the Ghetto ' so much that I have 
read it six times." " Madam," I replied, u I would 
rather you had bought six copies." 

Granted that we have even a tenth part of Mr. 

Zangwill's skill and success, we may agree with 

170 



THE AUTHOR 171 

Horace Walpole's young friend that there is 
nothing so charming as to be an author ; but 
"nothing so charming as authors" is a judgment 
which seems to spring from very immature ex- 
perience. It was said of the Banker-Poet, Samuel 
Rogers, that he was prodigal in what he valued 
least, which was money ; and niggardly in what 
he valued most, which was praise. The jealousies 
and hatreds of literary men are proverbial, and 
some great authors, feeling it idle to blink the 
fact, have turned it to good account in their 
writings. Mr. St. Barbe in " Endymion," when he 
found that he had not been made a Baronet, 
loudly professed his contempt for the honour 
which had not been bestowed. " Not that I 
wanted their baronetcy. Nothing would have 
tempted me to accept one. But there is Gushy ; 
he, I know, would have liked it. I must say I 
feel for Gushy ; his books only selling half what 
they did, and then thrown over in this insolent 
manner ! " 

But though I think that " nothing so charming 
as authors" is too sweeping an assertion, 1 gladly 
admit that some authors are, and have been, 
among the most delightful of mankind. The 
accomplished Mrs. Blimber protested that, if she 
could have known Cicero and talked with him in 
his retirement at Tusculum, she would have died 
contented ; and so I feel that, if I could have 
known Sir Walter Scott and have roamed with 
him through any of the scenes over which he 



172 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

threw the enchantments of his genius, I should 
have tasted the highest perfection of human com- 
panionship. And even if we leave the Giants — 
the great creators and masters of Literature — on 
one side, we may find excellent company among 
men of more modest fame. " Gentlemen," said 
Matthew Arnold to the Income Tax Commis- 
sioners, who tried to assess his profits from litera- 
ture at ;£iooo a year, "you see before you what 
you have often heard of — an unpopular author" 
The appeal had the immediate effect of reducing 
the assessment from ^iooo to ^200 ; and the 
Commissioners had the opportunity of seeing 
what a charming person an unpopular author 
can be. 

The Popular Author is not always so pleasant. 
If the popularity has come with a bound or a 
boom, our fallen nature is apt to become un- 
bearably vain-glorious. There is a solemnity 
about the Successful Author, a gravity, an abid- 
ing sense of solitary greatness, which lies upon 
his immediate circle 

"Heavy as frost and deep almost as life." 

The Successful Author is not content with his 
balance at the bank, his favourable reviews, his 
recognition in society. All these joys are justly 
his ; but he takes an unhallowed delight in ex- 
plaining to all who will give ear the circum- 
stances under which he first realized his gift — 
the event which supplied him with his plot, the 



THE AUTHOR 173 

names and addresses of the people whom he has 
used for characters, and the methods by which 
his masterpiece was evolved. 

All these morbid symptoms are exaggerated in 
the case of the " One-book Author/' if that phrase 
may be permitted. u Single-speech Hamilton" 
bore that title in honour of the one good speech 
which he ever delivered, although he made a 
great number of bad ones; and the "One-book 
Author " may have attained half-a-dozen failures, 
but is classed and differentiated by his one 
success. In his case the social pressure is ex- 
treme indeed, and it is generally exercised by his 
wife or family. " Papa was sitting in that arbour 
when he got the first idea for his great scientific 
romance, ' The Loves of the Earwigs.' " Or, " This 
is the table at which my husband wrote his 
wonderful scene where the curate goes mad on 
discovering that Bishop Lightfoot mistook the 
whereabouts of Galatia." Mr. Anstey Guthrie has 
ruefully remarked that these are days of theolo- 
gical fiction, metaphysical romance, and novels 
with a purpose ; and the dealers in those wares 
are the worst offenders in the way of egotism 
and pomposity. 

The Mechanical Author, though comical, is 
harmless. Anthony Trollope was at the head of 
this department, and he had powers which, one 
would think, might have made him independent 
of mechanical arts. There are more imitators of 
his method than the novel-reading public sus- 



174 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

pects ; but his powers are not so easily repro- 
duced. The Mechanical Author maps out his 
year and his days with mathematical precision. 
In 1906 he will produce a Novel, a " Curtain- 
raiser," two Short Stories, and a Guide-book to 
Kamschatka. For the Novel he will allow six 
months ; for the Curtain-raiser three ; the Guide- 
book will occupy his autumn holiday, and the 
Short Stories will be knocked off at Easter and 
Whitsuntide. His apparatus consists of a Type- 
writing Machine, a Dictionary of Quotations, and 
a Notebook. Into the last-named receptacle facts 
of all sorts and sizes are diligently pressed ; and 
the Mechanical Author, with the most delicious 
solemnity, parades in his next chapter the infor- 
mation which he has just acquired. "Who," he 
asks, " can ever forget ? " — some incident of which 
he himself only heard for the first time last night 
at the Savile Club. " Few," he writes in pensive 
strain, "are they who can recall the genial per- 
sonality of" — some departed worthy about whom 
anecdotes were retailed yesterday at Mrs. Leo 
Hunter's luncheon-table. 

This indiscriminate and unguarded use of 
the notebook is not without its perils. There 
was once an accomplished man of letters to 
whom tales of conscientious rabbits and intel- 
lectual cockatoos were dear. He lived in the 
neighbourhood of a large school, and some 
of the urchins whom he kindly entertained dis- 
covered his amiable gullibility. Henceforward, 



THE AUTHOR 175 

whenever they were short of cash, they stood 
and spoke thus with themselves : " Let's go and 

pitch a yarn into old . Shall it be your 

sister's cat this time, or my governor's retriever ? " 
These preliminaries adjusted, our young friends 
hastened to the Author's house and communicated 
some new and startling fact in natural history. 
This was gladly received, carefully entered in the 
notebook, and shortly afterwards reproduced in 
print. Meanwhile the boys had jam and sausages 
for tea, and the principal narrator went back 
to school with half-a-crown in his pocket. Sir 
George Cornewall Lewis in his forgotten essay 
on " The Influence of Authority in Matters of 
Opinion " traces the word " authority " to the 
Latin auctor , and says that "an auctor meant 
the creator or originator of anything. Hence any 
person who determines our belief is called an 
auctor. As writers, particularly of history, were 
the authorities for facts, auctor came to mean a 
writer." Little did the country clergymen and sub- 
urban spinsters who revelled in the Grandmother's 
disquisitions on the intelligence of the lower ani- 
mals dream of the real "authority" for what 

they read. Though, indeed, Mr. was the writer, 

and a voluminous and sententious one, it was 
really the boys of Mudport Grammar School who 
were the "authorities for facts," and therefore, 
according to Sir G. C. Lewis, the true Authors of 
the wondrous tales. Early in life they had found 
their way into the ranks of that great profession 



176 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

which ranges from Herodotus and Shakespeare 
to Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Mr. George R. Sims ; 
and they shared the conviction of Horace Wal- 
pole's young friend, that "there is nothing so 
charming as Authors, and to be one." When 
Matthew Arnold saw "in the frontispiece to one 
of Mr. Hep worth Dixon's numerous but well- 
merited editions, the manly and animated features 
of the immortal Guide to Mormonism," he a could 
not help exclaiming with pride, ' I too am an 
Author ! ' " 



CHAPTER XXVI 
THE AUTHORESS 

Ellen Temple was born at Upper Tooting. She 
believed herself to have been a cousin of the last 
Duke of Buckingham, who was dead, and could 
neither confirm nor deny ; and also of an eminent 
prelate, who was alive, but repudiated the relation- 
ship with characteristic vigour. Undaunted by 
this rebuff, and encouraged by the panegyrics of 
the Head Mistress of the local High School, Ellen 
early assumed the airs of a celebrity, and trans- 
muted her baptismal name into Elaine. From 
schoolroom-days she dabbled in literature. The 
name of " Elaine Temple " must be familiar to all 
readers of the Upper Tooting Parochial Magazine, 
and it is not unknown to serious students of the 
Commonwealth. That journal doubled its circu- 
lation as long as "The Creed and the Creche : a 
Plea for Denominational Education," was running 
in its columns, and the a Reflections of a Road- 
Scraper " were reprinted in a volume which the 
reviewers called " dainty." Flushed by these 
triumphs, Elaine Temple insisted on retaining her 
maiden name when she married Sam Trotter, 

the bank-manager, and for some twenty years 

177 M 



178 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

Mr. and Mrs. Temple-Trotter lived a busy but un- 
exciting life in the seclusion of Shepherd's Bush. 

This period — to which Mrs. Temple-Trotter now 
refers as "that dear, quiet time before my Life- 
work had claimed me " — was marked by a series 
of publications, mainly educational: "A Class- 
book of Conchology," " Jurisprudence for the 
Kindergarten," and an historical series of li Lives 
of the Deans of Booking." These, and such as 
these, had been for many years the innocuous and 
rather unremunerative labours of Elaine Temple- 
Trotter, when lo ! in the maturity of her powers, 
she plunged suddenly into a line of fiction which 
her friends called " subversive," and forsook the 
traditions of Mrs. Markham and Mrs. Sherwood for 
those of Aphra Behn and George Sand. 

The subversive book was called, all simply, 
" Sarah Smithers," and it depicted the mental 
struggles of a young lady who, having been 
brought up in a parsonage, and having taught in 
a Sunday School, unfortunately became acquainted 
with a fascinating but dissolute philosopher. This 
gentleman, who had deep-set eyes, a Napoleonic 
chin, and "too-full, red lips," addressed all his 
powers to the task, only too easy as the event 
proved, of undermining Sarah's principles. Once 
emancipated from the fettering superstitions of 
her youth, Sarah, with startling suddenness, 
became a missionary of Subversion, and devoted 
her life to the work of undermining the super- 
stition of Marriage. While still in the prime of 



THE AUTHORESS 179 

life she died of jaundice and jealousy when she 
discovered that her philosopher had clandestinely 
married his cook. 

The success of " Sarah Smithers " was instan- 
taneous and terrific. All the Thinkers and the 
Souls said that it was epoch-making, and that no self, 
respecting woman who aspired to culture would 
henceforth be seen with a wedding-ring. The 
book sold like wildfire, and was instantly followed 
by a Sequel in which the philosopher was drama- 
tically punished for his departure from principle. 
The cook-wife became a Ritualist ; her morbid 
religiosity drove the philosopher to drink, and he 
expired with a brandy-bottle in his hand, ingemi- 
nating with parched lips, " Why did I forsake my 
Smithers ? " 

The Sequel sold even better than the original 
book. Sam Trotter invested the profits to excel- 
lent advantage ; and at the beginning of this year 
Elaine Temple-Trotter and her husband migrated 
from the suburban shade of Shepherd's Bush to 
the full-blown splendour of Clanricarde Gardens. 
Their house-warming was conducted on an en- 
tirely novel principle. Eating and drinking are 
commonplace. Dancing is frivolous ; and even 
the long-suffering of Bayswater will not endure a 
u conversazione." What was to be done ? A 
sudden flash of inspiration revealed the answer. 
Mrs. Temple-Trotter announced that, on Wednes- 
day afternoons in March she would give Readings 
from " Sarah Smithers " and its Sequel. Some 



180 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

of her closest friends had never read the books, 
and welcomed the opportunity of acquiring at least 
a nodding acquaintance with them. Serious devo- 
tees, who had read them, longed to hear them 
illustrated by the living voice and eye. There 
was a curiously mixed feeling as of going to 
church and at the same time doing something 
naughty. The drawing-rooms in Clanricarde 
Gardens had not yet been furnished. The walls 
were still covered by a watered white paper — no 
longer very white — with gilt foliations. There 
was not much fire ; but, per contra, no air ; and 
yet, again, a good deal of draught. Closely- 
serried rows of small cane chairs were crowded 
by Souls and Thinkers. Sam Trotter, in a new 
frock-coat, received the guests. The male part 
of the audience, unable to obtain seats, leaned 
against the window of the back drawing-room ; 
and the awe-struck silence of the gathering was 
only broken by the guffaws of Mrs. Temple- 
Trotter's Undergraduate brother, as he demanded 
of the butler on the stairs what sort of show 
this was going to be, and how long he would be 
expected to stick it. 

At that moment, amid an expectant scuffle of 
feet and a vibration of silk attire, Mrs. Temple- 
Trotter walked firmly into the front drawing- 
room and established herself on a packing-case 
covered with an " art - fabric " from Liberty's. 
She is a lady of a certain age and a certain 
height, with tawny hair dragged ruthlessly back 



THE AUTHORESS 181 

from an intellectual brow, gold pince-nez, and, to 
borrow a feature from a recent novel of deserved 
repute, "a highly distinguished chin." Without 
a word of preface she began. 

First Selection — " Sarah Smithers in the Sunday School." 

Second Selection — " Sarah Smithers meets the Philo- 
sopher." 

Third Selection — " What the Philosopher said in the Summer- 
house." 

Fourth Selection — " Free Love in Camden Town." 

(Ten minutes interval.) 

The Fourth Selection was the famous chapter 
where all the district-visitors elope with the choir- 
men, and, driven out of the church by the nar- 
row-minded bigotry of the Incumbent, establish 
themselves as a missionary community among 
the Railway Servants of the Midland Company. 
The passage where Sarah Smithers offers to 
reclaim the drunken stoker by uniting her lot 
with his was declaimed by Mrs. Temple-Trotter 
with extraordinary effect, and Mrs. Siddons might 
have envied the tone in which she uttered the 
stoker's final " Garn ! " 

After such a tumult of emotion, the ten minutes 
interval was very welcome. Many sought relief 
in tears, and loud was the buzz of long pent-up 
enthusiasm. 

" Wasn't it really splendid ? " 

u She/^ every word she said." 

" Oh, and she made me feel it, too." 



182 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

li What a power that is ! " 

" I believe it's hypnotic." 

" Of course you know it's her own story ? " 

" Is it really ? That makes it much more in- 
teresting." 

" Yes, the Philosopher was really her own grand- 
father." 

" Not really ? How awful to have one's prin- 
ciples shaken by one's grandfather ! " 

"I suppose he was a Radical. Of course that 
would account for everything." 

u But sh ! sh ! the Second Part is just going to 
begin. I wouldn't miss the next scene on any 
account." 

" Sh ! sh ! sh ! " 

We glance at our programme and see — 

Fifth Selection—" The Crisis." 
Sixth Selection — " The Catastrophe." 

But the Undergraduate's power of " sticking it " 
is exhausted. " It's about time to do a guy," he 
exclaims ; so he hurls himself tumultuously down- 
stairs. The less hardy spirits, awed by Sam 
Trotter's reproachful eye, huddle together in the 
back drawing-room, under a hollow pretence of 
giving up the best places which we have mono- 
polized so long, and with a secret conviction that 
the back-stairs must be somewhere handy. 

As I lay down my pen and review the foregoing 
narrative, I feel rather aghast at the levity with 



THE AUTHORESS 183 

which I have treated a serious theme. My only 
comfort is in the conviction that Mrs. Temple- 
Trotter will never cast her learned eye over my 
frivolous page, and will go to the grave in the 
cheerful though mistaken conviction that " Sarah 
Smithers " has placed the relation of the sexes on 
a permanently altered basis. From authoresses 
of a less didactic turn — Miss Broughton and Miss 
Cholmondeley and Mrs. Felkin and Lady Ridley — 
I feel that I have nothing to dread. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

THE BUSY IDLER 

I admit that the phrase is, as our grammatical 
friends would say, an Oxymoron, but I know no 
other which would describe the type. If it were 
not a point of literary honour to eschew the 
epithets which Shakespeare applies to the cat, I 
should apply them to the man whom I have in 
my mind's eye. Veiling them in synonyms, I 
would say that he is not only innocuous but 
essential ; he does a great deal in an unobtrusive 
way, and many good works would languish if 
they lacked him. Of course his most prominent 
characteristic is the fact that he has no pro- 
fession. Here in England we are to some 
extent — though not nearly so much as our 
American cousins — in bondage to the Profes- 
sional idea. There is a vague notion afloat that 
unless a man can write himself Clergyman, Bar- 
rister, Doctor, Soldier, Merchant, or the like, he 
must be what schoolboys inelegantly call a 

II Waster." Even that haziest of all descriptions 
"Something in the City" is deemed more 
honorific than the frank admission that one is, 
professionally speaking, nothing. Of course, in 



THE BUSY IDLER 185 

so far as this sentiment is an inarticulate as- 
sertion of the doctrine that no man has a right 
to cumber the earth in idleness and self-in- 
dulgence, it is morally sound ; but its practical 
defect is that it leaves out of sight all work 
which is not professional. Unless a man is paid 
for what he does, his neighbours persist in think- 
ing that he does nothing. Now, that this is true 
of a great many non-professional men — athletes 
and aesthetes, sportsmen, travellers, haunters of 
clubs, "Men about Town "—I fully admit, but 
it is conspicuously untrue of that worthy type 
which I have designated "The Busy Idler." 

Let me try to describe him. Of course he has 
a little money. The qualification is essential to 
the part ; but the nicely-calculated less or more 
does not signify. We will therefore assume that 
his income is ;£iooo a year, more or less ; not 
enough to create the deceitfulness of riches, but 
quite enough to keep him in decency and com- 
fort without professional effort. Perhaps in his 
hot youth he was called to the Bar, but he 
hastens to assure you that he never practised. 
If he dabbles in journalism, it is only to describe 
a Drawing-Room Meeting or to puff some Insti- 
tution to . which he is devoted. He generally 
belongs to a good family, was educated at a 
Public School and a University, and has been 
more or less "in Society" ever since he came to 
live in London after taking his degree. Of 
course he is a bachelor; the claims of husband- 



1 86 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

hood and fatherhood would clash fatally with 
the line of life which he pursues. But he has a 
kind of domestic instinct which shows itself in 
his way of living. He does not, as a rule, in- 
habit Chambers or Lodgings or Flats. Perhaps 
he did so just after he came up to London, but 
he soon grew tired of that " unchartered free- 
dom" and sought more homelike quarters. He 
has a little house in the purlieus of Belgravia 
or in far South Kensington — the sort of house 
which Mr. Lenville would have described as 
"pernicious snug." It is full of bric-a-brac and 
pottery, water-colour drawings, framed photo- 
graphs, and invitation-cards — for the Busy Idler 
has one foot on the sea of Philanthropy and 
one on the solid shore of dinner-giving Society. 
He has three servants, of undeniable respecta- 
bility, who watch over his health and comfort 
with scrupulous care. His one spare bedroom 
is generally occupied, either by a nephew passing 
through London on his way to school, or by a 
clerical friend from the country who wants to 
attend the May Meetings at Exeter Hall or to 
see Mr. Percy Dreamer's latest achievements in 
ecclesiastical millinery. For our Busy Idler is 
essentially clerical in his instincts and sympathies. 
As Bertie Stanhope told the astonished Bishop of 
Barchester, he "once had thoughts of being a 
bishop himself — that is, a parson — a parson first, 
you know, and a bishop afterwards." That plan 
of life was soon laid aside. Perhaps his health 



THE BUSY IDLER 187 

was not quite up to parochial requirements ; 
perhaps he disliked getting up early ; perhaps 
he felt that he would cut a sorry figure in the 
pulpit ; perhaps he had a constitutional objec- 
tion to cottages and sicknesses and smells and 
microbes. Whatever was the reason, he aban- 
doned his clerical ambitions ; but, being a really 
good fellow, he has compounded with his con- 
science by working indefatigably for his clerical 
friends. There is no limit to his unpaid 
activities. If his lot is cast in a parish where 
organization is the strong point, he is Church- 
warden, Sidesman, or School-Manager; Captain 
of the Boys' Athletic Teams, or President of the 
Saturday night "Men's Social." If ceremonial is 
what interests him most, he is Crucifer or 
Thurifer or Server ; flashes about the church in 
a scarlet cassock, or totters under a banner of 
fabulous dimensions. He teaches in a Sunday 
School or a Night-School, bosses the paro- 
chial Temperance Guild, or holds a Bible Class 
for Working Men. In an age when clergy- 
men are increasingly tempted to leave the Word 
of God and serve billiard-tables, he takes the 
management of the Men's Club into his own 
hands, collects subscriptions vigorously, lays 
them out prudently, and organizes all the social 
work of the parish. 

But his activities extend far beyond parochial 
boundaries. He is on the Boards of half-a-dozen 
Hospitals, regularly visits the Wards, inspects 



188 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

the food-supply, and makes rigorous inquisition 
into the sanitary arrangements. He is on the 
Committee of the Orphanage, the Refuge, and 
the Penitentiary, and never misses a meeting. 
He is an Associate of one of the larger Sister- 
hoods, is hand-in-glove with Mother Margaretta 
and Sister Mary Jane, and is an unfailing atten- 
dant at the Annual Festival at Clewer or East 
Grinstead. 

He must be kept carefully distinct from the 
Faddist, whom we discussed before, for the Busy 
Idler is essentially a man of convention and pro- 
priety. Like the Parish Clerk in the epitaph — 

" He keeps the pious path his fathers trod, 
And loves Established ways of serving God." 

There is nothing odd in his dress. He does not 
wear blue plush gloves or a slouch hat, but 
nicely-creased trousers and buttoned boots. He 
is for the orthodox practice whether in religion 
or in medicine, works whole-heartedly with the 
Vicar and the Doctor, and sets his face against 
all quackery, whether spiritual, moral, or physi- 
cal. In these respects he is clearly marked off 
from the Faddist ; but, for all that, he often 
finds his way on to the platform. He is not, 
as a rule, much of an orator, and is put up last 
to second a vote of thanks to the Chairman ; 
but he may be relied on to drop a sovereign 
into the plate, and that is a form of support 
which outweighs much eloquence. At a Draw- 



THE BUSY IDLER 189 

ing-room Meeting he is specially at home. The 
Mission Church of St. Simeon Stylites, East 
Wapping, is more than usually out of funds. 
The Missioner is anxious to enlist the sympathy 
and the cheque-books of the West End, and for 
that purpose a Drawing - room Meeting in 
Belgravia or May Fair must be organized. Who 
is to do the work ? The Missioner suddenly 
remembers that he was at Charterhouse or 
Magdalen with the Busy Idler, and pounces on 
him with alacrity. "Now, my dear chap, you have 
nothing on earth to do. I think you might 
undertake this job to help an old friend " — and 
the Busy Idler gladly consents. He persuades 
his aunt, the Dowager Lady Kew, to lend her 
drawing-room and provide tea and coffee. He 
draws up the form of invitation, and sends out 
five hundred cards at his own expense. The 
meeting is announced for 3.30 ; but an hour 
before that time he is on the ground, posing 
that water-bottle and glass without which no 
Drawing-room Meeting is valid, arranging the 
chairs, distributing literature, and welcoming 
with eager smile the earlier arrivals. " Do come 
this way. I can get you a capital seat. Do you 
prefer the fire or the window ? How nice of 
you to come ! It is such a pity it is so wet. 
But I think we shall have a good meeting. The 
Duchess of Pimlico promised to come, and the 
two Miss Yellowboys never fail, and they are 
much more liberal than the Duchess ; only pray 



190 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

don't say I said so. Do you know the Missioner 
— Bumpstead ? He is such a good fellow ! He 
deserves all we can do for him ; and St. Simeon's 
is such an awful slum. Who is going to take 
the chair? The Bishop of Brompton. Oh, here 
he comes. So kind of you to come, Bishop ! 
Now I think we can begin" — and so on, and so 
forth. The flood of philanthropic oratory flows 
for an hour; a chinking of cups and an agree- 
able smell of coffee suggest more mundane 
thoughts. The Stingy and the Cunning begin to 
slip away, as they hope, unobserved ; but the 
Busy Idler is beforehand with them, and is on 
guard at the drawing-room door with a soup- 
plate in his hand. An hour later he has counted 
the collection and handed it or its equivalent 
to the rejoicing Missioner, and then flies off to 
snatch a hasty dinner before going to preside 
over the Quarterly Concert of the Drum and 
Fife Band. 

Thus the Busy Idler passes his day. His life 
is one long Drawing-room Meeting, varied by 
Boards, Councils, Committees, Clubs, Concerts, 
and Church Services. The lesson which he 
teaches to a megalomaniac age is "the sublimity 
of small tasks well performed." 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

THE CLUB-MAN 

Strange as it may seem to the austere student 
of Sociology, there are men who live and move 
and have their being in Clubs. In Club-land their 
day begins, in Club-land it is spent, in Club- 
land it closes. Their interests in life are Club- 
interests, their occupations are Club-occupations, 
their hopes and fears and anxieties and ambi- 
tions are engendered by the air of Clubs and 
are bounded by the area in which Clubdom 
reigns. In earlier days I had a friend, who lived 
under the parental roof in Belgravia until he 
had nearly reached middle - age. His parents 
lived long, but they could not live for ever, and 
eventually the home was broken up. Not long 
afterwards I met my friend walking dejectedly 
along Piccadilly, and paused to say a few sym- 
pathetic words on his recent bereavement. He 
replied with unfeigned emotion : u Yes, indeed. 
It makes a tremendous difference in life — greater 
than one would have thought possible. You see, 
I used to begin my day at the Bachelors', and 
work along Piccadilly, and down St. James's 

Street, and along Pall Mall, till I ended at the 

191 



192 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

Travellers', in time for tea. Now that I have 
rooms in Pall Mall, I have to begin at the 
Travellers' and end at the Bachelors', and the 
change is enormous. However, I suppose one 
will get used to it in time." 

The "Pall Mall Guide to the House of Com- 
mons" (while yet the present Duke of Devon- 
shire sat in that assembly) remarked, with a kind 
of demure playfulness, that u Lord Hartington 
has only eight clubs." Let us take pattern by 
this high exemplar, and assume that our typical 
Club-man has the same number. First and fore- 
most, he has a Political Club. If he happens to 
belong to a strongly political family, Whig or 
Tory, he probably finds his way, while still quite 
young, into Brooks's or the Carlton. If his 
politics are more personal than hereditary, he 
may choose between the Reform or the Devon- 
shire, the Junior Carlton, the Conservative, the 
Constitutional, or St. Stephen's. And here let it 
be remarked in passing that a young gentleman 
who attaches himself to the Conservative party 
will find that he has a far larger choice in the 
way of Clubs than is open to the nascent 
Liberal. Club-land is Conservative as the sea is 
salt. Whatever his politics, the Club-man pro- 
bably has two political clubs ; he habitually uses 
the more comfortable of the two, but occa- 
sionally visits the other by way of showing a 
friendly interest in the affairs of the Party. 
Then, of course, he has some Social Clubs, in 



THE CLUB-MAN 193 

which, unless he is abnormally fond of political 
chit-chat, he finds himself more at home than 
at the headquarters of Liberalism or Conserva- 
tivism. If he is young and frivolous, he may be 
found at the Cocoa Tree, which, though the 
oldest club in London, is, by a curious paradox, 
the chosen haunt of callow youth. If he is not 
quite so young as he once was but wishes to 
keep the air of juvenility, you may see him 
in the historic bow-window of White's or at 
the not less commanding corner whence the 
Bachelors survey society. If he is a person of 
high consideration, he may belong to the Marl- 
borough and drink his five-o'clock-tea at the 
next table to an Illustrious Personage. If he 
has any relations with the Foreign Office or the 
Diplomatic Service, he may rub shoulders with 
Ambassadors at the elegant St. James's. 

Since the days when Major Pendennis break- 
fasted at "Bays's," and stirred Glowry, the 
Scotch surgeon, to impotent jealousy by the 
sight of his invitation-cards, no one has eaten 
his morning meal at a club ; and for the idle 
hours of the forenoon and afternoon one club 
will serve pretty nearly as well as another. But 
where is the Club-man to dine ? This is a vital 
question, and must be faced gravely and an- 
swered decisively before he chooses his evening 
club. To reply first by negatives, he will not 
dine at the Athenaeum, where all the arts and 
sciences are understood except Gastronomy ; 

N 



194 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

nor, as a rule, will he frequent a Political Club 
at the dinner-hour. To dine at Brooks's has 
been likened to dining at a Duke's house with 
the Duke lying dead upstairs; and the Carlton 
and the Reform are apt to be overcrowded by 
a sudden influx of hungry M.P.'s just released 
from a division. 

If the Club-man is fortunate enough to have 
got into the Travellers' (and he must have been 
very young and unknown when he succeeded), 
he may dine there very pleasantly. If he loves 
to season his repast with talk of bullocks and 
foxes, rents and runs, he will get an excellent 
meal at Boodles'. If his idea of happiness at 
dinner is tranquil comfort, he will find it 
realized at Arthur's. The presence of femininity 
is, by some mysterious law, incompatible with 
the full and easy play of the gastronomic in- 
stinct ; the solitude and solemnity of a club- 
dinner best befit the sacred importance of the 
meal. It has, I believe, been remarked by some 
profound observer of human life that there is, 
sooner or later, an end to all things ; and even 
dinner, the purest of all pleasures, cannot last 
for ever. Sooner or later our Club-man has 
finished his coffee, his Kummel, and his cigar. 
For a few delicious moments be toys in thought 
with " the rich relics of a well-spent hour " ; and 
then, " serenely full," he asks himself where he 
is to spend the evening, and, if he is in the 
humour for cheerful society, he could not do 



THE CLUB-MAN 195 

better than drop in at the Turf. Some livelier 
haunts near St. James's Place it were perilous to 
name. 

Of course, if our Club-man is a Club-man 
and something more — if he has a profession, a 
pursuit, or a hobby, — he will probably join a 
club which has its special and distinctive char- 
acter. If he is an old soldier, he is eligible for 
"The Senior," and may make free with the Duke 
of Wellington's dry sherry and Dugald Stewart's 
still drier library. If he is a young soldier, he 
may choose between the Army and Navy, the 
Naval and Military, the Cavalry if he is a 
cavalier, and the Guards if he is a "gravel- 
grinder." If he loves the drama, he may choose 
the Garrick ; if whist, the Baldwin or the Port- 
land. If he rejoices in the associations of Cam 
or Isis, he can join the United University, where 
Mr. Gladstone's ghost still walks ; or the Oxford 
and Cambridge, where Sir Henry Campbell-Ban- 
nerman may be encountered in the body. If he 
enjoys the society of schoolmasters, he will find 
it at the New University; if he is a "littery 
gent," the Savile will welcome him to a house 
which once belonged to a Rothschild. 

There is, in fine, no limit to the possibilities 
of experience and enjoyment which Club-land 
offers to the Club-man. To the neophyte it is " a 
world of opportunity and wonder " ; to the old 
stager it is the lotus-land of his destination and 
his rest. But to the man in the middle term of 



196 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

existence, old enough to be critical and not old 
enough to be lethargic, Club-land is a sphere of 
varied and beneficent activity. Our Club-man 
serves on the Committee of the Carlton or is 
one of the "Managers" of Brooks's. He meets 
the chef in secret conclave, keeps the steward up 
to the mark, and shares with the butler the 
awful secrets of the cellar. At Clubs where 
reading is the fashion he pervades the Library, 
directs the attention of the Librarian to mem- 
bers who talk, and arouses from slumber those 
who snore. He is a tremendous authority on 
ventilation and sanitation, he keeps a watchful 
eye on the waiters' liveries, and his advice is 
taken before the Coffee-room is repainted or 
new kamptulicon is laid down in the basement. 
Perhaps he is an active propagandist in the cause 
of the Club ; catches desirable youths at Trinity 
or Magdalen, Sandhurst or the Temple; pilots 
them through the perils of the Ballot, and gives 
cheerful dinners to introduce them to their 
fellow Club-men. Or, just for the sake of 
variety, he may choose another line — organize 
the blackballing contingent, and keep the Club 
unspotted by the morally, racially, or profes- 
sionally undesirable. 

Let no one pity the Club-man. He has what 
we all profess to desire more than gold or silver 
— an opportunity in which his peculiar gifts can 
be used to the best advantage. If his sphere 
of influence seems a trifle circumscribed it can 



THE CLUB-MAN 197 

easily be enlarged, for, when he has drained the 
delights of all existing Clubs, he can always 
found a new one, and to found a New Club is 
a constructive effort which adequately represents 
and rewards the labour of a lifetime. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

THE DINER-OUT 

Here are the pleasures of antithesis ; for the 
Club-man is essentially a diner-in. The Club 
is his ark, his sanctuary, and his home. He loves 
its staid tranquillity and its silent decorum. 
He likes to choose his dinner, and, having 
once chosen it, he would rather eat it alone 
than share it with unappreciative friends. So 
he dines in solitary state, while "John brings the 
pickles and Thomas hurries up with the Harvey 
sauce ; Peter comes tumbling with the water-jug 
over James, who bears the glittering canisters with 
bread." The Diner-out orders his life on very 
different lines. He starts on his career in London 
with the manly resolve that he will, as a rule, 
dine at other people's expense, and this resolve is 
easier of fulfilment than those who have never 
made the experiment might deem possible. The 
intending Diner-out serves his apprenticeship, so 
to speak, in the houses of his relations. We will 
assume for the moment that his home is in the 
country. He comes up to London from Oxford 
or Cambridge, intending perhaps to follow some 

profession, perhaps to live on the paternal allow- 

198 



THE DINER-OUT 199 

ance ; in either case dinner is a necessity ; and, 
by a natural instinct, he turns to his relations 
for the supply of his need. He dines in rapid 
succession with the head of his family, with the 
opulent banker who married his cousin, and with 
his maiden aunt, who arranges a little party ex- 
pressly to launch him. At each dinner he makes 
new acquaintances, and he diligently pursues his 
advantages. He meets at a ball the young lady 
whom he took in to dinner the night before ; 
asks her to dance, but does not pester her if she 
is engaged ; takes her mother to supper, and helps 
them to get their carriage. Human nature is 
amenable to small politenesses, and two or three 
of these attentions produce an invitation to dinner. 
So a fourth house is added to our young friend's 
dining-list, and, encouraged by success, he ex- 
tends his plan of campaign. Perhaps he encoun- 
ters a father and mother superabundantly blessed 
with marriageable daughters, and in such homes 
a plausible and well-connected young man, even 
though not of great possessions, is always wel- 
come. Perhaps he falls in with some profes- 
sional dinner-giver, who is glad to know of 
some one not too proud to fill a place left vacant 
at the last moment. Perhaps — and this is the 
best opening of all — he is introduced to some 
opulent dowager who still likes to entertain, but 
has rather outlived her contemporary friends and 
her social renown. To a superannuated hostess 
of this kind the young Diner-out is indeed a gift 



200 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

from Hermes ; for new blood is essential to social 
success, and a youth who will really bestir him- 
self to be pleasant and amusing is worth his 
weight in gold. From our infancy we have been 
taught, in a distich of sound sense though im- 
perfect rhyme and rhythm, that 

" Little Tommy Tucker 
Sings for his supper." 

And the young Diner-out brings all his accom- 
plishments to bear on the task of consolidating 
his position. The envious St. Barbe in " Endy- 
mion " says of his more successful brother-clerk 
Seymour Hicks — " He dines with Lord Cinque- 
Ports ! It is positively revolting. But the things 
he does to get asked ! Sings, rants, conjures, 
ventriloquizes, stands on his head." And young 
Mr. Thomas Tucker, at least in the earlier stages 
of his dining career, is forced to rely a good 
deal on similar arts. 

All this, however, is only apprenticeship, and 
of course the length of the preparatory stage is 
modified by the greater or less skill and aptitude 
of the apprentice. If he is worth his social salt, 
he soon gets to be recognized, and even courted, 
on his own merits, and not merely because he 
is a nephew of Lord Wimpole's or first cousin 
to the Harley-Bakers. An Illustrious Lady, once 
presenting a young gentleman to Queen Victoria, 
described him as "nephew to dear Aunt Cam- 
bridge's lady," and the young Diner-out soon 



THE DINER-OUT 201 

becomes justly impatient of a condition in which 
he is only known by these genealogical indi- 
cations. If he has got his wits about him, he 
soon establishes a footing of his own. Perhaps, 
to use Hudibras's phrase, he " smatters French" 
or German, and then he is a treasure in houses 
where a foreign guest has to be entertained and 
the host's vocabulary does not get much beyond 
"Oui, oui." Perhaps he knows something about 
books or pictures ; perhaps he dabbles in things 
theatrical ; perhaps he sings in a choir or is in- 
terested in Oxford House, and therefore fits in 
so well if the Bishop of London happens to be 
dining. Whatever his speciality is, it can be 
turned to good account. Then again Politics 
affords a tremendous scope for the Diner-out ; 
political life depends a good deal on dining ; only, 
in this case young Tucker must make up his 
mind about the party to which he means to 
belong, for political dinner-givers are peculiarly 
vindictive, and to be seen at a house of the wrong 
complexion is fatal. Soon after the " Home 
Rule Split" of 1886 a Liberal statesman told me, 
with tears in his voice, that it had disastrously 
affected his dining-out. "If," he said, "it were 
merely that the Unionists severed all connexion 
with us, I should not complain. But there, is a 
section of them who will dine with us but won't 
ask us to dine with them. That I call base." 

In the summer of 1878, just after Lord Beacons- 
field's triumphant return from Berlin, Mr. Glad- 



202 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

stone's social unpopularity was extreme. A dis- 
tracted hostess was going round a London party 
saying in the most pathetic tone, li Gladstone 
is coming to dine with me next week, and I 
can't get a soul to meet him." Then suddenly 
espying young Tucker, and justly assuming that 
he would not let his politics interfere with his 
dinner, she said abruptly, "Will you come?" and 
was beyond measure grateful when that callow 
youth replied that he didn't the least mind 
meeting the Liberal leader. But it was a de- 
cisive act on Tucker's part. In Mr. Gladstone's 
own phrase, he had burnt his boats and broken 
his bridges ; thenceforward he must dine with 
Liberals or with Neutrals. The Tories preferred 
his room to his company. 

But now we will suppose that the Diner-out 
has firmly established his position in the world. 
Henceforward he is as a man whom dinner- 
giving people, for some mysterious reason or 
combination of reasons, must invite. Thus the 
way is made clear before his face, and he sails 
over summer seas. His writing-table is littered, 
or his looking-glass framed, with the legible signs 
of his social triumph. There are large cards in- 
viting to hecatombs in the Palaces of Park Lane, 
and insinuating notes from young hostesses cum- 
bered by the cares of unaccustomed hospitality. 
The wise Diner-out is apt to shrink from the 
more pretentious hospitalities, and to cultivate the 
circles where his presence is really considered a 



THE DINER-OUT 203 

boon. He constantly bears in mind the wisest 
saying of the wise Prince Consort — "Things 
always taste best in small houses." He sets his 
face like a flint against long invitations, for he 
knows only too well that, just after he has pro- 
mised to dine six weeks hence with Colonel and 
Mrs. Welbore or old Lord Gruncher, something 
much more attractive will turn up at three days' 
notice. Nor is the Diner-out altogether governed 
by selfish motives. He has not sat at other 
men's mahoganies for twenty years without ac- 
quiring a certain notion of what makes a dinner 
" go " and what gorgonizes it into petrifaction ; 
and he knows that the experience thus acquired 
may really be of some use to his young friends 
the Fitz-Roy Timminses, when they begin giving 
dinners in Lilliput Street. To a lady who said 
that she could not attempt dinner-giving because 
she had lived long out of London and knew 
nobody to invite, Sydney Smith, at the height 
of his social fame, replied : " I will dine with you 
twice a week, and, when people know that, you 
will find no difficulty about getting them to your 
house." It is not every Diner-out who can ven- 
ture on so high-handed an exercise of the social 
prerogative ; but if Tommy Tucker joins the pro- 
fession young and sticks to it sedulously he may 
be in a position to make or mar a dinner before 
he is five-and-forty. In social England, as in 
Imperial France, there is a carriere ouverte aux 
talents. 



CHAPTER XXX 

THE DINNER-GIVER 

Mr. Brancepeth in " Lothair " is one of Lord 
Beaconsfield's most finished portraits. The picture 
was drawn by the hand of a master, and the 
original was so well known that all the world 
could see and admire the accuracy of the 
delineation : — 

" Mr. Brancepeth was celebrated for his dinners, 
and still more for his guests. He was a grave 
young man. It was supposed that he was always 
meditating over the arrangement of his menus or 
the skilful means by which he could assemble 
together the right persons to partake of them. 
Mr. Brancepeth had attained the highest celebrity 
in his peculiar career. To dine with Mr. Brance- 
peth was a social incident that was mentioned. 
Royalty had consecrated his banquets, and a 
youth of note was scarcely a graduate of Society 
who had not been his guest. ' I like Brancepeth,' 
said^ St. Aldegonde. ' I like a man who can do 
only one thing, but does that well.' " 

When that " one thing " is a thing so profoundly 
important as dinner-giving, the doer of it must 

not be dismissed in a paragraph. Indeed, so 

204 



THE DINNER-GIVER 205 

to dismiss him were not only ungracious but 
impossible ; for he has as many forms as Proteus, 
and it is the combination of them all that makes 
the typical Dinner-giver. 

First let us rule out what I may call the Com- 
mercial Dinner-giver — the man who, Bismarck- 
like, says Do ut des } — whose whole conception 
of dinner-giving is comprised in the terse phrase 
" Cutlet for cutlet." There are such men, and 
plenty of them ; but they are not worth dining 
with. The man who entertains twenty-four people 
at a banquet because he has dined with twelve 
of them already and hopes to dine with the other 
twelve soon is not a host to be trusted. The 
same commercial instinct which governs his in- 
vitations is only too likely to make itself felt in 
his cook's wages and his wine-merchant's bill. 
The man who makes the sacred rite of dinner 
a matter of barter or exchange is no safe 
Amphitryon. 

Almost as much to be suspected is the Dinner- 
giver with an Object — the man who entertains 
from a motive, even though that motive were 
the most laudable on earth. Of course the 
Political Dinner-giver is a heinous offender in 
this respect. In his loyal anxiety to make young 
Jawkins acquainted with his political leader, 
Lord Decimus Tite-Barnacle, or to patch up 
a reconciliation between William Buffy and 
Augustus Stiltstalking, he crowds his dining-room 
to suffocation, labours to give the conversation 



206 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

a profitable turn, and is fatally apt to forget that 
the first object of Dinner is Dining. 

People, again, who, to use a homely phrase, 
" are on the make " cannot be trusted as Dinner- 
givers. They may have the best chef in 
London, their walls may blaze with Romneys, 
and they may spend fabulous sums on their 
champagne and their orchids; but they are far 
too much occupied with the social strategy of 
the evening to be efficient hosts. In truth, the 
path of the Dinner-giver " on the make " is beset 
with perils and perplexities, and the arts to 
which he has recourse are so curious that they 
may well engross his entire mind. Mr. Cobden, 
sitting on a Parliamentary Committee and ex- 
amining Lord John Russell, then Prime Minis- 
ter, on the question of official salaries, elicited the 
reply that, in Lord John's opinion, they were 
none too large. With quiet persistence, Cobden 
rejoined, "I can quite understand, Lord John, 
that your official position involves you in a great 
many expenses. But don't you find that you are 
much more frequently invited to dinner-parties 
than you were before you were Prime Minister ? 
And does not that circumstance equalize matters ? " 
Lord John replied that it had not occurred to him 
to strike the balance ; and he might have added 
that he dined with his friends whether he was 
in office or in opposition, and did not enquire 
into the subsidence of the weekly books. And 
here a change is to be noted. In days gone by, 



THE DINNER-GIVER 207 

people dined only with their friends. But in this 
respect Society has undergone a change. The 
Dinner-giver " on the make " comes up to London 
with his million, more or less honestly acquired ; 
buys a mansion, and begins to entertain. The 
simplest of all beginnings is to trump up some 
excuse for inviting a Great Man. If he declines 
you are no worse off than you were before. If he 
accepts, you build up your party on his promised 
presence. u Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (or 
Mr. Chamberlain, or Mr. Balfour or whoever 
the notable may be) is dining with us on 
Wednesday. We are asking a few intimate 
friends to meet him, and should be so glad if 
you would join us." So the trap is baited ; so 
the snare is spread. For one who refuses, two 
accept ; and in three days you have arranged 
a company of whom not one would have con- 
sented to darken your doors if you had not 
secured the Great Man. But the blanching anxiety 
involved in planning and executing a manoeuvre 
like this is fatal to that light-heartedness which 
is essential to a successful host. To entertain 
successfully, the host must have what the hymn 
so beautifully calls 

" A heart at leisure from itself, 
To soothe and sympathize." 

And that is impossible when one is anxiously 
watching to see whether the Great Man is behaving 
civilly to his fellow-guests. Our social success 



208 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

would be dreadfully imperilled if the Lion of 
the Evening only growled and tossed his mane 
at the assembled jackals. 

" But turn we from these bold, bad men," who 
defile hospitality with calculation, and entertain, 
not for love of their guests, but for some such 
base object as economy or politics or social 
aspiration. The real Dinner-giver is the man 
who, to use Sydney Smith's phrase, " welcomes 
his guests with that honest joy which warms 
more than dinner or wine " ; who invites us 
because he likes us, and, having invited us, studies 
to give us the best dinner within his compass. 
It is currently said in clerical circles that the 
sermon which costs the preacher nothing is 
worth exactly what it costs ; and, turning to the 
lighter life of Gastronomy, I would say that, if 
a dinner is to be really good, the host must 
(like Mr. Brancepeth) put his whole heart into 
the work of preparing it. He must ponder 
thoughtfully over the Bill of Fare, not relying on 
his cook's advice, for she will wish to produce 
strange and untried dishes for her own glori- 
fication. Rather should he tell her exactly 
what she does best, and in what points she 
can improve herself and what she must avoid. 
He should reckon the amount of whitebait or 
asparagus which will be required, being very 
careful to leave a worthy margin in case of 
second demands. As to wine, the rule is sim- 
plicity itself. Buy the best you can afford. 



THE DINNER-GIVER 209 

Never economize in wine. If you only give one 
dinner a year, give the best. Champagne is not 
necessary, though, alone of all created wines, it 
fulfils the ideal of making glad the heart of 
man. But good champagne is expensive, and 
no man has a right to grumble if you give him 
sound claret, or the still wines of Moselle, which 
combine salubrity with cheapness, and, as Mr. 
Finching, the wine-merchant in " Little Dorrit," 
said, are "weak but palatable." 

Though I insist so strongly on the sacred 
duty of care in arranging the Bill of Fare and 
choosing the wine, and though I think that 
trouble is well bestowed on the temperature of 
the dining-room, the flowers, and the waiting, 
I think that anxiety about choosing guests is 
quite unnecessary. You ask a dozen of the 
pleasantest people you know, and fling them to- 
gether in a kind of social hotch-potch. At first 
they may be a little stiff, but u Turtle makes all 
men equal," as Lord Beaconsfield said, and good 
wine makes the dumb to speak. Presently a 
pleasant murmur of conversation begins to circle 
round your board ; in ten minutes every one is 
talking at once, and illustrating Lord Houghton's 
proverb that " out of the abundance of the mouth 
the heart speaketh." The host, having set the 
ball rolling, can now begin to think of his own 
dinner. The butler, if he is worth his salt, sees 
to it that his master has a second help of mullet 
and is not fobbed off with a drumstick. Every 

O 



210 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

one is cheerful, every one is comfortable, every 
one is on good terms with himself ; and, when 
the party breaks up, the man who has dined 
with you for the first time says to his companion 
in the hansom, " What a good chap our host is ! 
Did you eat that lobster-curry ? " Even so Mr. 
St. Barbe, after dining with the Neuchatels, de- 
clared that he felt a new and strange sensation 
about his heart : u If it isn't indigestion, I think 
it must be gratitude." 



CHAPTER XXXI 

THE INVALID 

Suffering is sacred, and the real Invalid is no fit 
subject for critical analysis. We salute the high 
example of patient endurance ; and marvel, and 
pass on. For our present purpose the Invalid 
signifies either the man who is really well and 
plays at being ill, or who is really a little ill and 
pretends to be very much worse than he is. In 
either case, he makes his health his profession, 
and is what our forefathers called a valetudi- 
narian. The word is inconveniently long, but the 
thing is the type which we are to consider. 
Whoever first coined the phrase " He (or she) 
enjoys bad health " hit, by a happy Malapropism, 
the exact truth. The first Lord Lytton, who was 
fond of oracular sentences, once pronounced 
that "money is character." It might be at least 
as wisely said that health is occupation, and to 
some people a thoroughly enjoyable one. Once 
let the subject of health take firm possession of 
the mind, and no other occupation is necessary 
or even possible. It claims all day and all night 
for its own, and grasps the soul with what 
Chalmers finely called " the expulsive power of 



212 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

a new affection." Literature and art and politics 
and social chit-chat are dismissed from our 
thoughts, and are replaced by systems of drain- 
age and rules of diet, hygienic underclothing, 
and boiled milk. Every meal is a new and 
startling combination of minced beef and hot 
water, or cheese and nuts, according as we 
choose to follow one system or its rival. The 
day begins with a cup of cocoa in which a dash 
of Price's Glycerine has been substituted for 
sugar. Gymnastic contortions take the place of 
exercise. Massage, electricity, and medicated 
baths supply us with recreation. We dine on 
grape-nut cutlets, and after dinner sit for three 
minutes in a hip-bath of cold water. As our 
sleep is a little precarious, we calm our nerves 
by playing Patience after dinner or having the 
Times read to us, and retire early to rest, in 
company with a hop-pillow, a cup of Benger, 
and a teaspoonful of bromide. If we should 
chance to wake in the night, there are cocoa- 
nibs and a plasmon biscuit within easy reach 
of our bedside. 

Such is the Invalid's day, at least in its main 
outline and general principles, but of course it 
admits of infinite variation. Some are never 
well except at Brighton or Torquay, some can- 
not breathe comfortably outside London, some 
swear by Biarritz and some by North Berwick ; 
but whatever be the place that suits the Invalid, 
it is bound also to suit his family. For there 



THE INVALID 213 

can only be one Invalid, in the full and consti- 
tutional sense, in one house, and by his (or her) 
pleasure all domestic life is regulated. All social 
obligations are abrogated by the Royal Prero- 
gative of the Invalid. Lord Montfort in " En- 
dymion" used to excuse himself from whatever 
was tedious and tiresome by saying, "You know 
my wretched state " ; but that, says Lord Beacons- 
field, was what " nobody exactly did know, parti- 
cularly as Lord Montfort was sometimes seen 
wading in streams breast-high while throwing his 
skilful line over the rushing waters." 

The domestic circle of the Invalid is perfectly 
inured to this discipline, and the casual visitor 
is expected to be equally complaisant. " I am 
afraid you found it very hot at dinner. Papa 
has neuritis, and cannot bear an open window." 
11 1 ought to warn you that the drawing-room is 
rather cold. Mamma always feels faint if the 
thermometer is above 40." " I am afraid I must 
ask you not to poke the fire in your bedroom, 
and to shut your door very quietly, for my wife 
always goes to bed at nine, and the least sound 
destroys her sleep for the night." "No, we 
never go abroad, and very seldom even get a 
glimpse of London, for my husband dislikes 
travelling. He finds that the train always gives 
him migraine. He is such a devoted father 
that he can't bear the girls out of his sight, and 
of course I can never leave him for an hour, so 
we don't get away from home very much." 



2i 4 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

All the routine of life is regulated by the same 
considerations. If the Invalid takes a walk, it 
must be on a dead level, for hills fatigue him. 
If he drives, he must change his seat in the 
carriage every ten minutes, lest the east wind 
should vex his throat. If he pays a call, he 
must keep his greatcoat on, for he catches cold 
so easily. If you offer him five-o'clock-tea, he 
will demand insistently whether it has stood for 
more than three minutes, and, shrinking in 
horror from the proffered muffin, will nibble 
with explanatory apologies a gingerbread - nut 
made from a recipe of Sir Tumley Snuffin. If 
he goes to a play, it must be a matinee, for an 
evening performance would interfere fatally with 
dinner, and on all matters of meals the Invalid's 
laws are as those of the Medes and Persians. 
If he goes to church, he must sit near the door, 
lest a paroxysm of claustrophobia should sud- 
denly interfere with his devotions. In travelling, 
he must have the seat nearest the window (to get 
air), with his back to the engine (to avoid dust), 
and, in all those petty but animated disputes 
which arise over the question of the shut or 
open window, he carries the day by the tranquil 
dignity with which he says, " I am sorry to be 
so tiresome, but I am an Invalid." 

It belongs, if not to the essence, yet certainly 
to the perfection, of the type that the Invalid 
should have a shadow or a satellite — a being 
whose whole existence is borrowed and derivative, 



THE INVALID 215 

or who is content to revolve round the central 
luminary. 

Mr. Wititterly in " Nicholas Nickleby" stands 
for all time as the model Husband in Attendance, 
taking an honest pride in his wife's infirmities. 
" She is Sir Tumley Snuffin's favourite patient, 
and is the first person who took the new medi- 
cine which is supposed to have destroyed a 
family at Kensington Gravel-pits." The Wife in 
Attendance — "poor wretch," as good Sam Pepys 
called Mrs. Pepys — is a common object of the 
seashore. An invalid brother often contrives to 
fag his sisters very satisfactorily, and I have 
known cases where an invalid sister has effectu- 
ally turned the tables. The lonely Invalid, 
bachelor or spinster, is badly off in this respect. 
If a woman, she is forced to rely on a tl Lady 
Companion," as the phrase was in Miss Crawley's 
days, or, in more modern parlance, a " Private 
Secretary," who, approaching her task in a pro- 
fessional spirit, naturally won't put up with quite 
so much nonsense as those who are tied and 
bound by the chain of relationship. If a man, 
he is forced to rely on his valet — " Muggins is a 
very superior fellow, quite above his class. He 
understands a great deal about illness, and can 
take a temperature as well as I can." Alas for 
the bachelor Invalid who gives himself over to a 
nurse! Hushed in grim repose, she expects her 
evening prey, and too frequently secures it. The 
relations of the Invalid to the doctor would fill 



216 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

a volume, but, roughly, they may be divided into 
two main classes. There is the relation in which 
the doctor enslaves the patient to a minute 
system of life and diet, and there is the relation 
in which the patient exhibits a will of his own, 
and the doctor can only accommodate his science 
to the human element in the problem. " With 
me," cries the robust Invalid, "all health is a 
matter of digestion. I have found by experience 
that Dressed Crab suits me. If Snuffin says it 
don't, Snumn's a fool. I am perfectly willing to 
take his physic, but he shall not interfere with 
my diet." 

Most curious of all is the influence exercised 
by invalidishness on friendship. Indeed the way 
of the Invalid's friend is hard. If he doesn't 
sympathize enough, he is called selfish ; if he 
sympathizes too much, he depresses the patient ; 
if he says cheerfully, " I'm glad to see you looking 
so well," he only gets snubbed for his pains ; 
and, if he were so indiscreet as to say, " By Jove, 
you look bad ! ", he would never enter the house 
again. 

In days gone by I knew an Invalid who com- 
bined in high perfection all the attributes of 
the type. He was rich, indolent, selfish, and 
imperious. His family were his slaves. Nurses 
and servants quivered when he sneezed, and 
even the doctors (who lived on him), knowing 
the hot competition in the profession, deemed it 
inexpedient to prescribe what he disliked. But, 



THE INVALID 217 

strange to relate, his friends fell off like autumn 
leaves. At last he was left with one friend only, 
and that of a rather subservient type. One day 
the toady was sitting by the Invalid's sofa, and 
in a transport of friendship laid his hand on 
the patient's leg. Next morning he received a 

letter to this effect : " Dear , I must tell you 

that I was surprised by the thoughtlessness — I 
will not call it by a harsher name — which you 
showed this morning. I think you knew that I 
have long suffered from varicose veins, and that 
rough touch of yours might have terminated my 
life. I must decline any further visits from you, 
but this untoward incident will make no difference 
to the ^200 which I have left you in my will." 

Surely this was worthy to be included among 
those Partings of Friends which have turned 
the course of history. 



CHAPTER XXXII 

THE SQUIRE 

To pass from the Invalid to the Squire is to 
enjoy the pleasure of swift and sudden contrast. 
The Squire is never ill. Nay, more — the mere 
suggestion of illness or delicacy in another rouses 
all his manly scorn. "That fellow Millikin is 
always seedy — but what can you expect? He 
eats four meals a day, takes no exercise, and is 
always drugging himself. If he would eat about 
half what he does, chuck his physic-bottles away, 
and hunt three days a week, he would be perfectly 
fit. I told him so the other day, straight," — and 
you may risk a bet that the Squire will wind up 
his terse allocution with an apocryphal saying 
which he attributes to Lord Palmerston — "There's 
nothing so good for the inside of a man as the 
outside of a horse." Meanwhile the wretched 
Millikin is incessantly urged by his doctor to 
avoid cold and fatigue, to use a generous diet, 
and to take a tonic three times a day and a 
sedative draught at bed-time. He obeys his 
medical adviser with scrupulous fidelity, but the 
mere sight of his obedience moves the Squire 

to incoherent wrath. " I don't want all that 

218 



THE SQUIRE 219 

messing about; why does [Millikin? You may 
depend on it that it's partly laziness and partly 
nerves — and I believe there's a good deal of 
humbug mixed up with it." 

Thus the Squire. And these vigorous |utter- 
ances about his neighbour's health are only part 
of his all-round dogmatism. The Squire must 
never be contradicted. He is accustomed to 
have his own way, to prescribe other people's 
ways for them, and to speak his mind without 
let or hindrance. When I analyse a Squire, 
I do not enquire too nicely into details of station 
or income. He may be a peer of ancient lineage 
but small estate. He may be, like all Miss 
Braddon's heroes, a baronet. He may be a 
country gentleman undecorated with titles, in 
which case he will probably tell you that his 
grandfather refused a peerage. The essential 
characteristic of the type is that he lives on his 
hereditary acres, never goes to London, and is 
surrounded by a little court to whom his word 
is law. The exercise of authority, even on the 
smallest scale, is dear to his soul, and subserviency 
is the air he breathes. 

" Superiors ? Death ! And equals ? What a curse ! 
But an inferior, not dependent, worse ! " 

The Squire lives in a substantial house of 
dark red brick with facings of white stone, set 
in what he calls a park and his detractors meadow- 
land. The amount of his income is, as I said 



220 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

just now, immaterial to his character. It may 
range from £5000 a year in good times to £3000 
in bad ; but greater or less makes no difference 
to his resolute self-esteem. Of course in these 
sad days of agricultural depression he is not so 
well off as he would like to be, and he girds 
incessantly at the stockbroker who has bought 
the neighbouring estate, and his brother-squire 
who has a slum-property in the adjacent town ; 
but, richer or poorer, he is the Squire, and is 
hedged by a divinity before which the parish 
quails. The Squire, like the Czar, exercises a 
paternal despotism alike over Church, State, and 
domestic life. If he is patron of the living, the 
appointment of a new vicar gives full scope for 
the exercise of his most majestic qualities. " I 
put the fellow through his facings," he says, "and 
let him know pretty plainly the sort of thing I 
expect in my parson. No Socialistic folly — no 
setting class against class, or encouraging the 
labourers to think they are badly off. I've tied 
him up pretty tight, I can tell you, and I think 
he knows on which side his bread is buttered." 
Or perhaps the living belongs to another patron, 
and the Squire, much to his disgust, is forced 
to entrust his soul to a pastor chosen for him. 
tl Do you know what the Bishop has done ? 
Stuck a full-blown Ritualist in my parish. The 
fellow bedizens himself in all the colours of 
the rainbow, and actually turns his back on me 
when he says the Creed. Well, you may be 



THE SQUIRE 221 

sure I have given him a bit of my mind, and 
I told him plainly that, if he can't do the service 
properly, I'll do it myself in an empty coachhouse. 
These young chaps from Oxford want keeping 
in their proper place." 

On education the Squire is equally decisive. A 
fine specimen of the race who lived not a hundred 
miles from Aylesbury once exclaimed in a burst 

of generous passion, " I wish the last d d pen 

was burnt and the fool who invented writing had 
his head in a chaff-cutting machine." That stout 
opponent of progress is no longer with us in the 
flesh, but his spirit survives. Broadly speaking, 
the Squire dislikes education. " I've no notion 
of being taxed to teach my cowman's daughters 
to play the piano, and I should like to know how 
we are to procure labour if every little yokel is 
put on to Conic Sections." A Board School (as 
we still call it in the country, for we do not 
readily change our terminology) would of course 
be an unspeakable abomination in the Squire's 
eyes ; but, though he supports the National School, 
he is by no means content that the vicar should 
exercise too much control over it. At the time 
when the Kenyon-Slaney clause was passing 
through Parliament, I heard a Squire exulting 
over this new safeguard to our national Protes- 
tantism, and thus explaining its scope : " You 
see, the object is to prevent the parsons teaching 
the children that there are seven Sacraments. 
That's the Roman Catholic doctrine, and these 



222 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

Ritualistic traitors — for that is what I call them 
— are teaching it in our schools. The Church of 
England doctrine is that there are — well, I forget 
at this moment how many, but I know it's not 
seven." This combination of zeal for the Pro- 
testant faith with haziness about its tenets always 
struck me as exceedingly characteristic of the 
typical Squire. 

In politics, of course, the Squire claims an 
absolute control. His - wife and daughters are 
office-bearers of the Primrose League and use all 
their charms in the political education of the 
agricultural labourer. They are jealously aided 
by the other parochial powers. The Vicar's wife 
is assiduous in domiciliary visitation. The farmer 
lets the ploughman know that if he is caught 
listening to a blooming Radical in a Red Van he 
may seek a job somewhere else. The Squire 
communicates his pleasure to his tenants through 
his agent, and the Vicar (if he is like-minded 
with the Squire, as he generally is) enforces from 
the pulpit the cardinal duties of contentment, 
submission, and reverence for authority. Now 
and then the tranquillity of the village is shaken 
by the appearance of the Liberal candidate. Of 
course no room is available for his meeting. 
The Vicar refuses the schoolroom and the farmer 
padlocks his barn. A meeting is held with con- 
siderable difficulty on the village green. The 
agent occupies a prominent place near the 
orator's waggon, and it is deemed inexpedient to 



THE SQUIRE 223 

ask for a show of hands. The proceedings are 
reported to the Squire, whose indignation knows 
no bounds. "That fellow Jawkins had the im- 
pudence to come and spout his Free Trade 
nonsense in my village. There he was, within a 
hundred yards of my park -gates, telling the 
labourers that they were underpaid, and rinding 
fault with my cottages because some of them 
choose to sleep six in a room. He may think 
himself devilish lucky that my stablemen didn't 
put him in the horsepond." 

But, whatever difficulties may attend the be- 
ginning and the course of the Liberal candidate's 
campaign, polling-day comes at last. The Squire, 
assuming with difficulty a genial and friendly air, 
and laying aside dictatorship, smilingly urges the 
labourers to stick to the colour under which they 
have enjoyed such abounding prosperity, and 
conveys them, grinning, to the poll in carriages 
swathed with Tory streamers. Official spies hang 
about the doors of the polling-booth, and the 
Squire's daughters are insinuating in their en- 
quiries about Tom Smith's vote and Jack Brown's 
promise. But Smith and Brown have learned to 
keep their own secret, and the Liberal candidate 
emerges victorious from the poll. Strong waters 
are insufficient to fortify the Squire under the 
horrible discovery that a ploughman dares think 
for himself. Like Mrs. Jarley when Miss Mon- 
flathers insulted her, he is " almost inclined to 
turn atheist when he thinks of it." 



CHAPTER XXXIII 
THE PLUTOCRAT 

"We have had Plutocrats who were patterns of 
every virtue ; but still let us be jealous of Plutoc- 
racy, and of its tendency to infect Aristocracy, 
its elder and nobler sister ; and learn, if we can, 
to hold by, or get back to, some regard for 
simplicity of life." This was Mr. Gladstone's 
appeal in 1887, when reviewing fifty years of 
political and social development. 

Let us be jealous of Plutocracy, Certainly the 
appeal has lost nothing of its reasonableness or 
its urgency in the lapse of eighteen years. In 
that time Plutocracy has advanced by leaps and 
bounds ; has made a ruinous and disgraceful 
war ; has profoundly corrupted the press ; and 
has organized, though so far without success, a 
gigantic gamble in the People's food. With such 
tremendous mischiefs as these in view, it seems 
of comparatively slight importance that honours 
have been bought and sold, that Society has 
been visibly vulgarized, and that many of the 
chief beauties, natural and artistic, of historical 
England have passed into the hands of an alien 

caste, lacking alike root in the soil and sympathy 

224 



THE PLUTOCRAT 225 

with the moral ideals which make a nation great. 
It was, I firmly believe, the sight of these pluto- 
cratic achievements which, at the time of Queen 
Victoria's death, made a good many theoretical re- 
publicans thank heaven that they lived under an 
Hereditary Monarchy. If the devolution of the 
Crown were a matter which could be affected by 
social intrigue, journalistic conspiracy, or pecu- 
niary influence, the Plutocrat would, beyond 
doubt, have had a try for it. The spirit which 
described the British Flag as a commercial asset 
would not have shrunk from regarding the Crown 
as a purchasable commodity. Better, in spite 
of all theoretical anomalies and imperfections, 
the thousand years of English Kingship, than 
those " obscene Empires of Mammon and Belial " 
which Plutocracy would erect in its place. 

But Plutocracy, after all, is an abstraction. 
Let us regard it in its concrete form — the Pluto- 
crat. What is he like ? Even outwardly, he is 
stamped by certain characteristics of person and 
bearing which mark him off unmistakably from 
the English gentleman. Matthew Arnold had a 
prevision of him long ago, before his develop- 
ment was anything like completed: "Job Bottles, 
who is on the Stock Exchange, a man with 
black hair at the side of his head, dark eyes, 
and a fleshy nose, and a camellia in his button- 
hole." For the camellia we have now learnt to 
substitute the orchid, and our true Plutocrat 
has a strong propensity to fur coats ; but other- 

p 



226 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

wise Matthew Arnold's description very well por- 
trays the Plutocrat of to-day. 

The Plutocrat is essentially a Londoner. If he 
is not in London, he is at Paris or at Brighton ; 
but he does not care much for the country. Of 
course he has a country house, for that is a 
necessary element in his scheme of life ; but he 
does not inhabit it very often, and, when he 
does, he contrives to make it look and seem 
exactly like a London house on a larger scale. 
Bridge rages from morn till midnight ; the tele- 
phone-bell tinkles without intermission, and tele- 
grams fall like autumn leaves. If he builds 
his house for himself, it reproduces the worst 
monstrosities of Park Lane. If he buys an old 
house, he commits the most shameless atrocities 
in the way of reconstruction and decoration. 
He stuffs the gallery of an Elizabethan manor 
with furniture of the French Empire, or repairs 
the breaches of an Edwardian ruin with Italian 
marble and gilds the roof of the Baron's Hall. 
Whether his house be ancient or modern, he 
lives and moves and has his being by the aid of 
electricity — electric light, electric bells, electric 
baths, and electric lifts. The house is very hot, 
and smells overwhelmingly of exotic flowers. 
From the drawing-room you can step into a 
winter-garden full of sham rockwork and tin 
ivy. From the walls of the dining-room Gains- 
boroughs and Hoppners, bought at fabulous 
prices from decayed gentility, look down with 



THE PLUTOCRAT 227 

astonished eyes upon their new surroundings. 
The gardens are on an enormous scale, and 
the glasshouses cover acres ; and the Plutocrat 
rejoicingly tells you the precise number of gar- 
deners which is required to keep the place in order. 
The stables are beautifully ornate, with maple-wood 
fittings and blue tiles ; the harness-room glitters 
like a silversmith's shop ; and the Stud Groom's 
cottage is a villa. The curious observer will 
note that there are a good many more harness- 
horses than hacks or hunters ; for the Plutocrat 
is not much at home on a horse, and prefers 
the security and dignity of a carriage. The 
lamented Mr. G. A. Sala declared that a Pluto- 
crat for whom he laboured used to begin a 
conversation by saying, " I have just returned 
from my drive. How did you get here ? I 
suppose you walked." 

The Plutocrat thinks it due to his position 
in the county to subscribe handsomely to the 
Hounds, and sometimes, in spite of qualms, he 
adventures himself on a made hunter in a country 
well supplied with gates. But his interest in 
the sport is palpably insincere, and he is con- 
siderably keener for his luncheon than for a 
second fox. Some years ago a Master of Har- 
riers was pursuing his miserable quarry in some 
fields near Leighton Buzzard. Suddenly, he was 
joined by a well-mounted Plutocrat of superlative 
splendour, who galloped round several large 
enclosures with keen enjoyment. Presently the 



228 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

wretched hare could go no longer, and was 
satisfactorily put to death. Thereupon the 
gorgeous stranger said to the Master, " Pray, 
sir, have we been pursuing that little creature ? 
I thought I was hunting with Lord Rothschild's 
Stag-hounds. I certainly started with them, but 
got thrown out ; and, when I saw you, I thought 
I had caught them up again." To the untutored 
eye of the Plutocrat there was no difference 
between the line of a stag across the Vale of 
Aylesbury and the gyrations of a hare in a 
strongly-fenced enclosure. He knew that he was 
"hunting," and that proud consciousness was 
enough. 

The Plutocrat hunts because he feels that 
hunting is the right thing, but he takes a more 
real pleasure in shooting. The whole business 
smacks so agreeably of wealth. The regiment 
of keepers and beaters ; the hosts of tame 
pheasants asking to be shot ; the elaborate pre- 
parations for the luncheon ; the carriages which 
convey the ladies to the scene of slaughter ; and, 
above all, the sense that he is at once astonishing 
and patronizing his guests — all these things fill 
the plutocratic breast with genuine joy. After 
all, the hunting field is a republic, where, if any- 
where on the earth, something like social equality 
reigns. But a shooting party is a despotism, 
where the Plutocrat is ruler, his guests are his 
subjects, and his selfishness is law. 

But, when all is said and done, the Plutocrat 



THE PLUTOCRAT 229 

does not really care for any kind of sport. In 
nine cases out of ten he is an alien or a cockney, 
or both, and sport is only a way of gaining 
admission to the social life of the county in which 
he fixes his abode. What he really enjoys is 
motoring. For him the motor must have been 
invented ; in it he finds the realization of all his 
ideals. It combines every element of life which 
he most enjoys — luxury, ostentation, insolence, and 
the sense that he is envied and admired. As he 
does not drive the car, there is no demand on his 
skill or courage. It poisons the air with dust and 
stench. It occasionally kills an old woman or 
mutilates a child, but the pace is too good to 
admit of enquiries. It brings the glare and noise 
and swagger of London into the "sweet, sincere 
surroundings of country life "; and, by practically 
annihilating distance, it makes the Kentish castle 
or the manor-house in the New Forest a suburb 
of Park Lane or Piccadilly. And this the Pluto- 
crat calls "sport." He presumes to bracket it 
with hunting among his amusements in "Who's 
Who " ; and in the vivacious columns of the 
tl Motorist " he gains the acceptable but ill- 
deserved praise of "a keen all-round sportsman," 
though there is no single sport, in the sense in 
which that term used to be understood by English 
gentlemen, in which he can hold his own. 

But perhaps it is when he turns his attention 
to politics that the Plutocrat is most offensive. 
He regards a seat in Parliament exactly as he 



230 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

regards a Sir Joshua, a tiara, a cabinet, or a villa. 
It exists, he wants it, and it can be bought. Such 
is his simple philosophy, and no one can say 
that it is wholly inconsistent with experience. 
The method is changed, but ^he principle re- 
mains the same as in the good old days of 
Shoreham and Retford and St. Albans. The 
Plutocrat no longer buys his votes at so much a 
head — the voters are too many and the results 
too uncertain. But he pursues his end by sub- 
scriptions and entertainments, patronage and 
custom. " I ply the gy me" said such an one in a 
burst of candour, and his notion of "plying the 
gyme " was to make the constituency feel that, as 
long as he was member, there would be money 
circulating in the neighbourhood, and that every 
one had a chance. When the Plutocrat is pitted 
against a poor man the contest is too unequal to 
be amusing, but when Plutocrat meets Plutocrat 
then comes the tug of war. I remember a small 
tradesman in a country town saying with smug 
complacency : " Both the candidates are wealthy 
men. The Liberal candidate is Mr. Cashington of 
the Stock Exchange, and the Unionist is Baron 
Shekelheim of South Africa. We are looking 
forward to a very interesting contest." There was 
great significance in that epithet " interesting." 



CHAPTER XXXIV 

THE ELECTION-AGENT 

I have described both the Squire and the Pluto- 
crat in their relation to politics. A friend who 
has an instinct for psychological moments invites 
some observations on that peculiar type without 
whose aid neither Squire nor Plutocrat could find 
his way into the House of Commons. I see the 
aptness of the suggestion, and propose to say 
a few words about the Election -Agent. This 
type must be divided into two classes, the Ancient 
and the Modern, and the dividing line between 
the two is exactly drawn by the Corrupt Practices 
Act of 1883. It was a main object of the men 
who passed that Act to abolish the Election-Agent 
of the Old School, to eradicate his professional 
traditions, and to penalize his trade. Before he 
is utterly forgotten, let us recall some of his 
characteristics. 

The Election-Agent of the Old School had no 
recognized status or profession. Very often he 
was an attorney, but that was rather a decent 
cloak for his real character than a true description 
of his essential function. In some cases his proper 

name and place of abode were unknown. Some- 

231 



232 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

times he was known by some such expressive title 
as "The Pump" or "The Man in the Moon." 
Sometimes he bore some traditional name which 
conveyed as clear a sense as Robin Hood. In 
distant days, when the Grenvilles dominated the 
Tory politics of Buckinghamshire, the Whig " Man 
in the Moon" was called John Terry. Whether a 
person rightly so called ever existed I know not, 
but as late in the world's history as 1880 his 
name was still a symbol and a token in the Vale 
of Aylesbury. The local politicians chanted a ditty 
which still rings in the ear of memory : — 

" John Terry is come down again, 

Come down again, come down again ; 
With his White Hat and his Rag Mop, 
To turn the Grenvilles round again." 

In this mysterious canticle, the White Hat 
traditionally signified Radical politics, as against 
the orthodox beaver of the established order ; 
and the Rag Mop was understood to mean a 
product of rags — namely paper, and more par- 
ticularly such paper as is issued by the Governor 
and Company of the Bank of England. 

The election of 1880 was the last at which the 
Agent of the Old School prevailed. A year or 
so later I met a hard-bitten practitioner of that 
school at the house of the man for whom he had 
acted, and who had been unseated for bribery. 
In the confidence of after-dinner claret, jthe old 
practitioner said : " It was a bad job, our host 



THE ELECTION-AGENT 233 

getting unseated, but I don't mind telling you, 
sir, that when I go into an election, I go in to 
win, and as to the way it's done — well, I'm not 
particular to a shade." The client might perhaps 
have fared better if these little distinctions had 
been more closely observed, but nothing shook 
the equanimity of the Agent. He had won the 
game, and the sequel did not signify. That 
excellent phrase — "not particular to a shade," — 
would have aptly described the temper of a 
Conservative Agent in a cathedral city in the 
north of England, whose private note-book of 
electioneering memoranda fell into the hands of 
the enemy and was produced in evidence at 
the trial of an Election-petition. Here are some 
of the items of expenditure, actual or contem- 
plated, which I have transcribed from the 
Report : — 

" £3 f°r letting a pole be put up. 
^196 for rosettes (at one shop). 

A. wants a change of air. 

B. is very favourable, but poor. 

C. promises, but wants a little drop. 
D.'s wife wants liquoring up." 

But, after all, there is a kind of grossness about 
these forms of suasion ; a more subtle one was 
practised by the Agent of a Plutocrat in a Mid- 
land county. This gentleman let it be understood 
that any one whose politics were of the right 
colour, and who had lost a cow or an apple-crop, 
could have a loan of £$ or so on easy terms. 



234 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

For three or four years no allusion was made 
to these little debts, but, just before the General 
Election, the Agent went round the constituency 
auricularly suggesting that, if Mr. Shekelheimer 
unfortunately lost his seat, he would terminate 
his connexion with the neighbourhood, and would 
be obliged to call in these small outstanding 
sums. This was a menace which worked like a 
charm. 

But, in spite of all said and done, the Agent 
of the Old School was "o'er good for banning," 
though precisians might call him "o'er bad for 
blessing." He knew, by heredity, tradition, and 
personal experience, every move on the election- 
eering board. He knew how to terrify the timid, 
and how to cajole the weak ; how to win his 
client's battle, and how to feather his own nest. 
But he was wholly free from the sin of treachery, 
and his devotion to the cause for which he 
worked covered a multitude of sins. He was 
entirely unscrupulous and absolutely loyal. 

Of the Modern Agent how shall I trust myself 
to speak ? Many of my readers must know him 
as well as I do. Alike externally and internally, 
he is quite unlike his forerunner. The Agent of 
the Old School was a convivial-looking gentle- 
man, with a twinkling eye, a horsey get-up, and 
a marked taste for port wine. The Modern 
Agent is a slim and genteel young man, with a 
staid and thoughtful air, a vast appearance of 
earnestness, and abstemious and almost ascetic 



THE ELECTION-AGENT 235 

habits. He has, what his forerunner had not, a 
recognized and official position. Some years 
ago some of the chief wirepullers of the Liberal 
party conceived the brilliant idea of setting up 
a test-examination for gentlemen who aspired to 
become Agents. It fell through because no one 
could be got to recognize the authority of the 
examining body, or to attach the slightest value 
to their certificate that the aspirant had satisfied 
the examiners. But, if only the experiment had 
been tried, the questions propounded to the 
candidate might have been very illuminating. I 
can well conceive the deft draftmanship of my 
friend Mr. Robert Hudson. "What are the 
chances of a Liberal Candidate who has declared 
his approval of Chinese Labour ? " " Is it possible 
to be for and against Disestablishment at the 
same time ? " " What formula would you suggest 
where the candidate dislikes Home Rule and 
there is an Irish vote in the constituency ? " 
"What should a supporter of Local Veto say 
when he is accused of robbing a poor man of 
his beer ?" 

The Agent of the Old School did his work in 
private, and a good deal of it after dark. His 
comings and goings were mysterious. He held 
consultations in secret places. He never appeared 
on a platform or committed himself to an opinion. 
He was profoundly, incessantly, and justly sus- 
picious of the other side, and would have made 
short work of any colleague or subordinate 



236 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

whom he saw conversing with the wrong colour. 
All this is changed. The New Agent is always 
on view. He flits from meeting to meeting, 
gazes pensively from the platform or the gallery, 
and is incessantly at the Candidate's elbow, full 
of suggestion, encouragement, or warning. Mean- 
while his proper work is neglected ; those 
mysterious transactions which his forerunner 
conducted in quiet corners are abandoned. He 
sleeps with the Corrupt Practices Act by his 
side ; and vague declarations at enthusiastic meet- 
ings are substituted for that close, intimate, and 
personal knowledge of the voters which in the 
days of smaller constituencies and more restricted 
suffrage really did the work of the election. 

And again the New Agent is terribly candid and 
courteous towards the other side. " Sir," said Dr. 
Johnson, "to treat your opponent with courtesy 
is to give him an advantage over you to which 
he is not entitled." This was a maxim which 
the Old Agent had laid thoroughly to heart. The 
Modern Agent praises the rival Candidate and 
that Candidate's Agent, ascribes to them every 
private and civic virtue, and mildly says that the 
contested seat is the only boon which he does 
not wish them to secure. All this stands in sharp 
contrast with the sturdy Whiggism of such men 
as the first Lord Leicester, who used to delight the 
Liberals of Norfolk by saying that, when he was 
a boy, his grandfather had taken him on his 
knee and said, " Now Tom, my boy, mind, what- 



THE ELECTION-AGENT 237 

ever you do, you never trust a Tory ; " to which 
he used to add, "And I never have, and by 
G — I never will." That is the electioneering 
language which English people understand ; and 
Lord Randolph Churchill's Life shows us that 
the shrewdest of observers very soon discovered 
the political value of invective. A mealy-mouthed 
Agent knocks all heart out of a contest. 



CHAPTER XXXV 

THE CARPET-BAGGER 

Parliament is dissolved ; * the writs are out and 
the voice of the Carpet-bagger is heard in the 
land. Already I have discussed the Candidate ; 
but then I spoke more generally, and did not 
analyse that particular type of candidate which 
is indicated by this picturesque Americanism. 

The Carpet-bagger can be best appreciated by 
placing him in contrast with the Common Can- 
didate who supplied us with our earlier type. Even 
the Common Candidate can generally show some 
reason, more or less special, why he should be a 
candidate at all ; and the Happy Candidate can also 
parade some claim upon the particular seat which 
he is attacking, or some qualification which may 
encourage reasonable hope that if he gets into 
Parliament he will be of some use there. As 
regards the first of these points, the Common 
Candidate of course expresses a fervent desire 
to serve his country on the high stage of Parlia- 
mentary life ; but the Carpet-bagger, however 
loudly he makes the same patriotic profession, 
is dogged by the ungracious suspicion that he 

1 January 1906. 
238 



THE CARPET-BAGGER 239 

has an axe of his own to grind or a log to roll. 
As regards the second, the first and most obvious 
reason is connexion with the place which one 
seeks to represent. To have been born in it is 
much ; to have been born near it is something. 
To have lived in it all one's life is (provided 
one has contrived to keep that benevolentia civium 
which Cicero extolled) is best of all. When Sir 
Elliott Lees fought Oldham in 1886, he carried 
all before him by his appeals to local sentiment. 
He had been born in Oldham, as was his father 
before him, and the electors might call him "an 
Owdham roughhead" if they liked. It was 
observed that every seat which Mr. Gladstone 
contested, and even every town at which he 
made an oration, had a knack of being, in some 
remote but sufficient way, connected with him- 
self or his ancestors or his wife's family ; inso- 
much that a Tory scribbler wrote an ironic 
dissertation on " Some of the More Famous Birth- 
places of Mr. Gladstone." A member of the 
Russell family, desiring to capture the chief 
town of Buckinghamshire and eager to establish 
a local connexion, was reduced to the rather 
depressing argument that his kinsfolk for three 
hundred years had been buried in that county. 
A flowery orator, contesting a county in which 
his family possessed hereditary acres, implored 
support on the ground that he had been "per- 
sonally connected with the district for more 
than six centuries " ; and, though the flippant 



240 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

replied that in that case he must be " full old 
for the job," this appeal to ancestry was not 
lost upon the sentimental. At the General Elec- 
tion of 1868 Lord George Hamilton conciliated 
a vast amount of good-will in Middlesex by 
reference to the fact that only five years before 
he had played in the Harrow Eleven. All 
these genealogical and geographical associations 
have their distinct advantages, and especially this, 
that they silence those disagreeable enquiries 
about the antecedents of the Candidate — where 
he came from and what he wants — which a 
suspicious electorate is only too prone to make. 
But the Carpet-bagger has none of them. He 
drops from the clouds. He has neither begin- 
ning nor end, ancestry nor succession. The 
local press can obtain only the haziest particu- 
lars — "John Jawkins, son of the late William 
Jawkins, Esq., of London, by his marriage with 
Mary, daughter of John Smith. Educated pri- 
vately. Has been engaged in business" (or 
"called to the Bar, but has never practised"). 
" Has contributed largely to periodical literature. 
A Unionist and supporter of Mr. Balfour but 
in favour of Fiscal Reform " (or " a follower of 
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, a Free-trader, 
and opposed to the Education Act." ) "Residence: 
The Acacias, Brixton (or Beaconsfield House, 
Croydon)." Then, again, in the way of quali- 
fications, the Common Candidate has something 
to show. He can speak, and may hope to catch 



THE CARPET-BAGGER 241 

the ear of the House. He knows something of 
history and politics, and can, as the homely 
phrase goes, open his mouth without putting 
his foot in it. He has a definite opinion on 
the issues of the moment, and will give a plain 
Yes or No to a question about his intended 
votes. He is intimately versed in local affairs, 
and may be expected to fight a stout battle for 
his constituency when harassed by Private Bill 
legislation; or at least he is rich, not unwilling 
to "part," and a tried friend in hard times. 

None of these qualifications, as a rule, belongs 
to the Carpet-bagger. His speaking is either 
halting and dry, hatched out of his notes, 
read from a roll of manuscript written within 
and without ; or else it is torrential in volume, 
extent, and rapidity, but lacking in conviction, 
and very uncertain in its influence on local senti- 
ment. In a word, the carpet-bag is too often a 
wind-bag, and the Carpet-bagger's opinions are 
of the haziest. Here let a concrete and recent 
instance suffice. It becomes known to the wire- 
pullers of a constituency with which I am con- 
nected that a gentleman, whose name and fame 
were alike unknown to us, was willing to be our 
Candidate at the Election of 1906. He was 
duly interviewed and examined, and, among 
other questions, he was asked what he thought 
about the army. Fired with patriotic zeal, he 
replied, a I am for a great increase in the army, 
as the surest safeguard against war." It was 

Q 



242 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

intimated to him that this sentiment would not 
go down with the electorate, and he took the 
hint with commendable alacrity. When the same 
question was put to him on the platform, his 
prompt reply was, " I am in favour of reducing 
the army to half its present size." There spoke 
the docile spirit of the genuine Carpet-bagger. 

Then, again, as regards his pecuniary quali- 
fication, the Carpet-bagger is shrouded in mys- 
tery. Before the General Election of 1880 a 
carpet-bagging barrister appeared as Conservative 
candidate for a small borough since disfranchised. 
There was the usual speculation about his whence, 
his whither, and his wherewithal. At first there 
was a good deal of anxiety and uncertainty ; but 
soon a holy calm settled down on the electoral 
breast. It transpired, through the unprofessional 
garrulity of the local solicitor, that the Conser- 
vative candidate had added a codicil to his will 
leaving .£10,000 to the charities of the borough 
which he hoped to represent. This was good 
enough. At any rate, he was a solid man ; and 
he was triumphantly returned. As a matter of 
fact, he was at the time of standing an appli- 
cant for relief from the Barristers' Benevolent 
Institution. 

But still the mystery remains. Strategical de- 
vices of this kind may deceive the very elect, and 
affect the votes of those whose eyes are steadily 
fixed on future advantage ; but they do not pay 
the Returning Officer's expenses. Yet those ex- 



THE CARPET-BAGGER 243 

penses are paid — and by whom ? Sometimes, 
strange as it may seem, they are paid by the 
Carpet-bagger himself. More than once in my 
political life I have known a man who had 
accumulated a few hundred pounds by profes- 
sional work convert the whole of his savings 
into ready money, and risk his all on the issue 
of a contested election ; quite prepared to begin 
again at the bottom of the professional ladder 
if he failed to enter Parliament. That is real en- 
thusiasm, and it requires a strong leader and a 
great cause to evoke it. 

Very often, of course, the Carpet-bagger is the 
nominee of some great potentate in the Borough 
or the County. Said a noble Duke before the 
Election of 1886 : u Send me down a candidate 
to turn the Home Ruler out of my division. He 
must be a gentleman, young, fluent, good-looking, 
and well-mannered. I will pay for his election, 
keep the register going, and allow him ,£500 a 
year as long as he sits." The right man was 
found, and was produced with great pomp before 
the admiring electorate. The local heiress threw 
herself enthusiastically into his canvass. He cap- 
tured the seat and the heiress as well, and they 
have lived happily ever after. Then, of course, 
there is the Carpet-bagger who is run by some 
strong interest, such as that wielded by Publi- 
cans, by Temperance Societies, and by Rail- 
way Companies. Some crucial instances of this 
type were not obscurely indicated in the House 



244 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

of Commons when the Payment of Members was 
discussed, and, though every one tried to look 
extremely independent, it was obvious that the 
House contained a good many more hirelings 
than were revealed by Dod. 

Should this paper fall under the eye of any 
potential Carpet-bagger who is going to try his 
luck at the next Election, I would say to such 
an one : " Be of good cheer. Reckon up the 
men now prominent in politics, and ask how 
many of them had originally any connexion with 
the places which they represent. Premiers, Chan- 
cellors, and Secretaries of State have gone carpet- 
bagging in their time, and every carpet-bag carries 
in it the potential key of a Cabinet box." 



CHAPTER XXXVI 

THE DISINHERITED KNIGHT 

"The device on his shield was a young oak tree 
pulled up by the roots, with the Spanish word 
Desdichado, signifying Disinherited." That device 
and that motto are rather conspicuously dis- 
played by the Chivalry of Protection, returning 
to-day 1 from the stricken field where it has 
fought and fallen. Let each Disinherited Knight 
comfort himself with the remembrance of Wilfrid 
in the lists of Ashby, and reflect that there may 
be triumphs reserved for him in some future 
Passage of Arms. But to-day he is Disinherited 
indeed, and his woebegone aspect would melt a 
heart of stone. 

Men take these reverses very differently. •' Each 
sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and 
woe." One is quite confident that the fiscal issue 
had nothing whatever to do with the result. "On 
Tariff Reform I should have won. It was Chinese 
Labour. It was the Schools. It was the Chapels. 
Every minister in the place preached against me. 
The Radicals put out the most shameful car- 
toons ; there was one of me holding a Chinaman 

1 Written just after the General Election, January 1906. 

245 



246 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

by the pigtail while Alfred Lyttelton flogged him ; 
that made a great impression." Another writes 
long letters to the newspapers showing con- 
clusively that he ought to have won, and that, if 
every one in the division had voted for him in- 
stead of against him, he would now be M.P. A 
third sits glowering in the corner of the smoking- 
room at the Club, considering all manner of re- 
vengeful policies. He would certainly go for a 
Petition, only it is so expensive and the result 
so uncertain. He will expose his successful rival 
on every platform in the constituency, and will 
most infallibly turn him out next time. He will 
withdraw his subscriptions from a place so desti- 
tute of common decency. " They'll find the 
difference when they apply to my successor. 
He hasn't got two sixpences to rub together." 
Another is ostentatiously cheerful ; is thankful to 
have got rid of all the worry ; hopes .he will 
never see the inside of the House again ; and 
rejoices that he now has a little time for his 
business, or for reading, or for looking after his 
property, or for cultivating the family affections. 
Alas ! poor Desdichado, the pretence, though 
creditable, is too thin. We can see your bleeding 
heart through the hole in the glistening breast- 
plate. Yet another variety takes refuge in a 
proud and gloomy silence ; involves himself in 
his own virtue ; and finds a sombre joy in prog- 
nosticating u a year of sects and schisms " for 
the victorious party. 



THE DISINHERITED KNIGHT 247 

In the Election just concluded, the Happy 
Candidate, as I drew him, has, in a great number 
of instances, gone down before the Carpet-bagger. 
But still there have been enough survivals to 
justify the type, and I have had the pleasure of 
saluting more than one Happy Candidate as 
victor in a hard-fought contest. But the device 
which the Disinherited Knight bore on his shield 
suggests other imagery than that of the battle- 
field, and it is peculiarly appropriate to the man 
whom recent convulsions have rudely ejected 
from his seat. "An oak tree pulled up by the 
roots." The image is horribly expressive. At 
the General Election of 1895 the Happy Candi- 
date acquired the seat for which he had been so 
carefully trained. He suited the soil, and the 
soil suited him ; and he put forth vigorous and 
apparently tenacious roots. If I suggest that one 
of those roots was Money, I insinuate nothing 
against the morality either of candidate or of 
constituency. I do not mean that votes were 
bought and sold, or that the provisions of the 
Corrupt Practices Act were violated. I mean 
nothing more heinous than that in every village 
of the Division or every ward of the Borough, 
as the case may be, there were a *' Rugger " 
and a " Soccer " football-team, a cricket-club, a 
cycling club, a flower-show, a fat-stock show, a 
bazaar for enlarging the church, and two Non- 
conformist chapels with debts on the building- 
fund. To these meritorious objects, and to others 



248 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

like them, the M.P. must subscribe or risk the 
loss of support. As Sydney Smith said, "You 
might as well try to poultice the hump off a 
camel's back as to cure mankind of these little 
corruptions." 

But Money is by no means the only root 
which the M.P. has struck into the soil. He 
has given to the utmost of his ability, but he 
has also worked like a slave. On dark winter 
nights he has jolted uncomplainingly from one 
village to another, running perilously near the 
edge of yawning ditches, going several miles out 
of his way in unlit lanes, waiting wearily at the 
level crossing till the belated train creeps in, and 
perhaps getting his linch-pin removed by the 
youth of the village while he is perorating about 
Trade or Empire. Or, if his lot be cast in the 
Borough, he has dined at six in the dog-days, 
and spent the glorious evenings of August and 
early September amid the foetid fumes of acety- 
line gas, perfecting the organization of each ward, 
and imbibing the most amazingly misleading re- 
ports about the results of the Registration. The 
Agent says proudly, " I don't believe in Meetings. 
It is the quiet, steady, day-by-day local work that 
tells " ; and the M.P. believes the Agent, and 
toils and suffers accordingly. 

There are many most excellent and deserving 
M.P.'s who, coming in the first instance from 
afar, pitch their tents in the midst of their con- 
stituents. It is a risky experiment. The M.P. 



THE DISINHERITED KNIGHT 249 

must give all his custom to the neighbouring 
tradesmen, must buy a good deal more butcher's 
meat than his family can consume, and dare not 
complain if the household loaf is a little stodgy. 
An M.P. dwelling among his constituents has 
parted with the ordinary rights of a free man and 
self-governing citizen. Then, again, he is probably 
put to a good deal of expense in painting, paper- 
ing, and draining the house which his Agent re- 
commends, and which, by a curious coincidence, 
turns out to belong to the Agent's cousin. For 
these improvements he must rely on local art, 
for the arrival of a band of workmen from 
Maple's or Shoolbred's would at once secure the 
seat for the opponent. The M.P., good, easy 
man, is no sportsman, but it is expedient that 
he should maintain foxes for the enjoyment of 
his neighbours, even at the expense of his own 
poultry-yard. The corpse of a fox discovered in 
the shrubbery would awake much livelier indig- 
nation than a murdered bishop. 

Yet another root is that of Parliamentary 
action. The M.P. answers every letter by return 
of post and with his own hand. He entertains 
constituents on the Terrace, and conducts parties 
round the Houses of Parliament. He asks 
incredible numbers of unnecessary questions, 
eagerly promotes the new Branch-Line which is 
to open up the dairy country, or fights tooth 
and nail for or against, as the case may be, a 
new scheme of urban sewerage. His speeches, 



250 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

though highly condensed in the Times, are fully 
reported in the local press ; and, if he ever tears 
himself away from the duties of the session, it is 
to open a Sale of Work or kick off at a football 
match. And so, as the years go on, the M.P.'s 
roots grow deeper and spread wider ; a holy calm 
diffuses itself over his breast, and he begins to 
think himself immovable. The Parliament is 
nearing its close. The Carpet-bagger has already 
appeared in the field, and has held a hole-and- 
corner meeting where he has been unanimously 
adopted. The Agent smiles sarcastically, and says 
it is a pity that a decent fellow should waste his 
money on a forlorn hope. The solid men of 
the party say that a constituency is not likely to 
part with a Member who spends a thousand a 
year among them ; and earnest politicians predict 
a redoubled majority. All at once — no one can 
exactly say why — the moral atmosphere seems 
to change. The new Candidate is young and 
active, very keen to win the seat, and not too 
mealy-mouthed in his language about the sitting 
Member. He has a fluent tongue and a face of 
brass ; his politics are popular ; his speeches 
attract their hearers, and his motor annihilates 
time and space. He is all over the constituency 
at once, haranguing, denouncing, promising, and 
flattering. He shows sport. He is fresh and 
lively and reckless. He doesn't care much about 
what players call the rules of the game, but he 
cares extremely about winning. The fateful day 



THE DISINHERITED KNIGHT 251 

of the Poll draws near. Superhuman energies 
are put forth on either side. Publicans turn on 
one sort of tap, and clergymen another ; beer and 
eloquence flow in equal and parallel streams. 
The Poll closes amid anxious uncertainty, and 
the hideous hours of counting crawl by with 
leaden foot. Suddenly the Returning Officer 
appears at the window of the Town Hall and 
makes the fateful declaration — The Carpet- 
bagger is in. The rest is silence ; but the ex- 
member realizes, as he has never realized before, 
what is implied in the sensation of "being pulled 
up by the roots." Figuratively he inscribes 
Desdichado on his shield, and, if he is a wise 
man, vanishes to the Riviera or the Nile. If he 
is unwise, he comes up to London, walks Pall 
Mall like an unquiet spirit, haunts the Club, and 
exhausts the patience of even sympathetic friends 
by elaborate explanations of his downfall. His 
crestfallen countenance peers gloomily through 
the windows of the Carlton, and, as he notes the 
tumultuous joy of the Reform Club, he wishes 
from a full heart that he had never heard the 
name of Tariff Reform. Will the up-rooted oak 
ever be replanted ? Will the Disinherited Knight 
ever recover his lost patrimony ? This and other 
things time has yet to show. 



CHAPTER XXXVII 

THE VICTOR 

Pedestrian prose is all unequal to the task of 
depicting the man who has just emerged vic- 
torious from the battle of the polls. Poetry 
must come to our assistance — 

" One after one the lords of time advance — 
Here Stanley meets — how Stanley scorns ! the glance." 

The late Postmaster - General will, I hope, for- 
give me if I venture to substitute for his own 
and his grandfather's historic name something 
more typical of the popular M.P. — 

" Here Jawkins meets — how Jawkins scorns ! the glance." 

Pall Mall is scarcely wide enough to hold him. 
He meets, and scorns, the glance of the Com- 
missionaire outside the Carlton. He bestows a 
copper on the Crossing-sweeper with the majestic 
benevolence of a monarch scattering largesse. 
He enters the Club as if it belonged exclusively 
to him — 

" Pride in his port, defiance in his eye." 

The buttony boys in the front hall see them and 

tremble, and the Hall-Porter who hands him his 

252 



THE VICTOR 253 

letters seems to be performing an act of homage. 
The Victor is longing to display his new-born 
magnificence in the crowded luncheon-room ; but 
his letters must be investigated first; so he seeks 
a cosy nook in the silent library and prepares 
himself to enjoy a feast of fat things. How nice 
the envelopes look ! " M.P." is such a picturesque 
suffix to the familiar " John Russell Jawkins, 
Esq." (for the Victor was named after a Whig 
statesman whom his father supported), and the 
initials a H. C.-B.," lurking in the corner of an 
official cover, suggest that his efforts on behalf 
of the Old Cause and the Big Loaf are not 
unrecognized in influential quarters. That fine, 
lawyer-like, writing is the Agent's, and sheer force 
of habit induces the Victor to examine it at once. 

" Dear sir, — I much regret to tell you " Good 

heavens ! what's this ? Is he going to say that 
there's to be a Petition ? The moment holds 
anguish, but the next line dispels it. The Agent 
only reports that the bill at the hotel is con- 
siderably larger than he had expected, and that 
another ^"ioo must be added to the Personal 
Expenses. He goes on to say that it has been 
usual for the Member to entertain a house-party 
for the local races, and that the late representa- 
tive subscribed very handsomely for restoring 
the Lady Chapel of the Cathedral — but these 
points can be discussed later on. The next 
envelope bears the post-mark " Harrow," and 
the letter breathes the generous simplicity of 



254 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

ardent youth. The writer is awfully glad that 
his uncle has got in, and sends his best love to 
his aunt and cousins. He has not got his 
Remove this term, but is playing in "Torpids" 
for his House, and enjoys racquets very much, 
but finds it such an expensive game. If his uncle 
would give him a new racquet, which he wants 
badly, he would always treasure it in memory of 
the Election of 1906. 

Next comes the Vicar of the principal parish, 
who has worked tooth and nail against the 
Liberal cause ; has sent his curates to disturb 
Liberal meetings ; has drilled his district-visitors 
to canvass for the Tariff Reformer ; and has 
given " magic-lantern lectures" with pictures of 
St. Paul's Cathedral converted into a music-hall 
and Westminster Abbey into an aquarium. Now 
the worthy man, with a fine oblivion of personal 
rancour, informs the Victor that he is willing to 
let bygones be bygones, and solicits a contribu- 
tion to his new Parochial Institute. A dozen 
letters, of similar tenor, from Nonconformist 
ministers of different persuasions, the Roman 
Catholic priest, and the head of the Undeno- 
minational Mission in Huggermugger Lane, have 
at any rate this justification, that the writers 
have worked for the Liberal cause. A consider- 
able number of enthusiastic supporters have 
been a little unfortunate just lately, and would 
be grateful for pecuniary assistance ; while the 
house - agents, money - lenders, wine - merchants, 



THE VICTOR 255 

shorthand-writers, and Private Secretaries, who 
desire in one way or another to serve the 
Victor's interests, are so many as to defy enu- 
meration. Now the letters are read, docketed, 
and put on one side for reply. Perhaps the 
Victor feels a little surprised that he has not yet 
been asked to move or second the Address, but 
the peevish thought perishes as he enters the 
luncheon-room. Now he is in all his glory. 
His enemies have been made his footstool. His 
friends crowd round with beaming countenances, 
and a good many men who have hitherto con- 
cealed their friendship are now effusively cordial, 
but their homage is less welcome. 

" The man who hails you Tom or Jack 
And proves by thumping on your back 

His sense of your great merit, 
Is such a friend that one had need 
Be very much his friend indeed 

To pardon, or to bear it." 

As the Victor writes his luncheon-bill the Head 
Waiter congratulates him in a darkling undertone, 
and he takes his seat with the air of an Emperor 
who has won his throne. 

It is to be noted by the curious observer that 
the Victor does not choose a table where M.P.'s 
of older date are sitting. There he would feel 
too like the New Boy at the Public School, and 
in his present mood of exaltation he has no 
liking for the part of Second Fiddle. He there- 



256 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

fore chooses a table where he discerns two or 
three mild men who will form a suitable 
audience, and, if one of them has ever failed 
in a political contest, his society is doubly 
grateful. While the waiter is bringing the toast 
and the butler is mixing the whisky and soda, 
the flood of vainglorious reminiscence begins ; it 
submerges the luncheon-table and overflows into 
the smoking-room. "Well, you see, I went into 
this thing determined to win. That's my way. 
Whatever I do, I do thoroughly. About the 
Fiscal Question I took my line at once. I saw 
it was no good shilly-shallying. That's what I 
admire in Joe — you know what he means. The 
chap I can't stand is Balfour. You never can 
tell where to have him. So I said to my people, 
' I'm a Free-fooder.' I said it at my first meet- 
ing, and I stuck to it till the last. It won the 
election. People like plain speaking. And I tell 
you what it is — the rougher the constituency the 
more they like to be represented by a gentleman. 
I saw directly how they tumbled to me on that 
account. After my first meeting, a man came 
up to me and said, ' Mr. Jawkins, I see at a 
glance that you're a man of culture and a gentle- 
man'-— not that I let the fact of my being a 
gentleman hamper me in speaking of my op- 
ponent. I said my opinion of him — straight. 
That's what people like." 

At this stage the Victor retails several hoary 
instances of plain speaking on public platforms, 



THE VICTOR 



257 



which may be humorous but are unreportable. 
His hearers have heard them after each election, 
but titter obsequiously ; and the Victor resumes. 
"Then, again, though I don't profess to be an 
orator, I can make a speech. I give 'em the 
sort of thing they understand. My voice is 
pretty good and carries a long way in the open 
air. And canvassing, again — they tell me I've got 
a certain way with me which tells. I don't know 
exactly how it is — I never studied it. Came to 
me naturally, I suppose. Whether it's a drawing- 
room in a Castle or a two-pair in a slum, my 
manner is just the same. I make myself at home, 
and that makes the others feel the same. A genial, 
sympathetic, hearty manner — that's what tells." 

The word " Castle" attracts the attention of the 
hearers, a little jaded by personal reminiscences. 
u Oh, you got the support of the Castle, did you ? 
That was lucky. I thought Lord Lumpington 
was a Tariff Reformer ? " 

"Well, so he is. We reckoned on him, as his 
father used to be a good Whig ; but, though I 
called at the Castle several times, I never got my 
foot across the threshold. And he took the 
chair for my opponent, and lent his carriages 
on the polling-day. But it did me nothing but 
good. When a man is unpopular with his butcher 
and baker, he's not very popular with any one. 
And that's what's the matter with Lumpington. 
No wonder he's in favour of Fiscal Change. He 
wants it, poor devil." 

R 



258 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

At this period? of the discourse (for conversa- 
tion it cannot be called) a mild man who takes 
a serious interest in politics says meekly, "And 
now that you've got in, Jawkins, what is the 
next step ? I am very anxious to see what the 
Government does. Which Bill do you think 
they will take first ? " 

This is exactly the opportunity for which the 
Victor has been longing, and the stream, tempo- 
rarily dammed, bursts forth with redoubled vigour. 

"My dear Mivins, that's the important point. 
As soon as I was elected, I wrote direct to C.-B. 
I told him plainly that, if he did not tackle the 
Education Act, even my seat would not be safe. 
Welsh Disestablishment, I said, can wait. One 
thing at a time. As to Old-age Pensions, we'll 
talk of them nearer the election. But the 
Schools must come first. On that point I am 
deeply pledged to the Congregationalists and the 
Baptists. I have squared the Wesleyans and the 
Jews, but I expect to have a little trouble with 
the Roman Catholics. Still, my personal honour 
is involved, and the word must be ' Schools 
first.' Yes, that's what I said, and C.-B., who is 
a very sensible fellow and an old friend of mine, 
said he quite agreed. I don't know so much 
about Birrell, though my wife likes his books. 
But I shall let him know what I think, and I'm 
told he's very quick at taking a hint. So, my 
dear Mivins, when you ask me what the Govern- 
ment is going to do, I say, Wait for the King's 



THE VICTOR 259 

Speech ; and, if it doesn't contain something about 
Education, and in a prominent place too, I give 
you leave to call me an Impostor. But my 
correspondence with C.-B. was confidential, so 
of course as regards details my lips are sealed." 



CHAPTER XXXVIII 

THE QUIDNUNC 

Dr. Murray defines a Quidnunc as "an inquisi- 
tive person ; a gossip ; a newsmonger." The 
" Standard Dictionary " of America defines him 
as "one who seeks or affects to know all that 
is going on." As a general rule I share Mr. 
Herbert Paul's dislike of people who use foreign 
words where English would express their mean- 
ing. But "Quidnunc/' though it certainly is not 
English, is not quite foreign, and it seems to 
signify a type of character for which no other 
precise equivalent exists. "Gossip" is certainly 
a better word, but it is encumbered by associa- 
tions of femininity and the memory of "Gossip 
Quickly." Shakespeare, as far as I remember, re- 
cognizes no male gossips. Then, again, "gossip" 
has a frivolous sound. One instinctively expects a 
gossip to deal with the lighter interests of life — with 

"personal talk 
Of friends who live within an easy walk ; " 

with marriages and rumours of marriage, scandals 
and sensations, festivities and "functions." But 

the Quidnunc is a far more profound character, 

260 



THE QUIDNUNC 261 

and he traffics in graver wares. Horace Wal- 
pole was a Gossip ; Charles Greville was a Quid- 
nunc. The graver quality does not necessarily 
exclude the lighter. The Quidnunc may be a 
gossip as well. He may babble of Lord A.'s 
income and Sir B. C.'s domestic differences ; the 
value of Lady D.'s jewels, and the amount which 
Mrs. E. has lost at Bridge ; but this is purely 
incidental. The essential characteristic of the 
Quidnunc is a simulated knowledge of grave 
secrets, and in political mysteries he is peculiarly 
at home. A typical Quidnunc was Thackeray's 
friend Captain Spitfire, who knew that Lord Pal- 
merston had sold himself to Russia and the exact 
number of roubles paid. "Why wasn't the Prin- 
cess ScragamofTsky at Lady Palmerston's party ? 
Because she cant show — and why can't she show ? 
Shall I tell you why she can't show? The Prin- 
cess Scragamoffsky's back is flayed alive. I tell 
you it's raw ! On Tuesday last at twelve o'clock 
three drummers of the Preobajinski Regiment 
arrived at the Russian Embassy, and at half-past 
twelve, in the yellow drawing-room, before the 
ambassadress and four ladies' maids, the Greek 
Papa, and the Secretary of Embassy, Madame 
Scragamoffsky received thirteen dozen. She was 
knouted, sir — knouted in the midst of England 
— in Berkeley Square — for having said that the 
Grand Duchess Olga's hair was red. And now, 
sir, will you tell me that Lord Palmerston ought 
to continue Minister ? " 



262 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

I believe I have said before that Lord Beacons- 
field told a young aspirant that the really pleasant 
part of office was not station or emolument, but 
the fun of hearing the ignorant chatter of society 
about things which it has no means of knowing. 
That chatter is, of course, mainly provided by 
the Quidnunc, and hence his social value. Two 
or three eminent instances of the type recur to 
my memory as I write. Each was the devoted 
friend of a Great Man, whose secrets he was 
supposed to share, and of whom he loved to be 
thought the exponent or forth-teller. 

A. was the friend of a Tory chief whom we 
will call Lord Stonehenge ; A., terribly at ease 
in Zion, always called him "Stonehenge," and 
seasoned his conversation thus : " I was staying 
from Saturday to Monday with the Stonehenges. 
Quite a small party. I took a long walk with 
Stonehenge in the afternoon, and heard a good 
deal that was very interesting. Whatever else 
happens, you may rely on this — that Stonehenge 
will never give in to the Tape-and-Sealing-Wax 
Bill, however much it is pressed on him. He 
regards it as confiscatory and Socialistic." 

"You may take it from me that Jawkins will 
never be in the Cabinet. Stonehenge thinks that 
he talks too much and is too intimate with the 
Press ; and that is what Stonehenge, with his 
aristocratic aloofness, abhors." 

"Stonehenge himself told me, in so many 
words, that he will never give preferment to a 



THE QUIDNUNC 263 

man who contributed to Caligo Cceli. He is a 
stiff Churchman of the old school, and is keen 
to scent heresy." It is my firm belief that 
Lord Stonehenge, who had a very bitter humour, 
used to stuff poor A. with all these confidential 
assurances just in order to conceal his actual 
designs. For, within a few months' time, the 
Government had adopted the Tape-and-Sealing- 
Wax Bill and carried it to a triumphant issue ; 
Jawkins was a Secretary of State ; and six con- 
tributors to Caligo Cceli had assumed aprons and 
gaiters. 

B. was the friend of a Liberal Leader whom 
we will call Lord Quex, and, like the conscientious 
histrion who played Othello in Mr. Crummles's 
company, he blacked himself all over for the 
part. Lord Quex was a gentleman of vivacious 
temper, strong utterance, and variable opinion ; 
and "panting B. toiled after him in vain." B. 
was by profession a journalist, and, in his desper- 
ate determination to follow the gleam wherever 
it led him, he floundered into the most dreadful 
quagmires. One day Quex made a Protectionist 
speech, and the faithful B. wrote that " Lord 
Quex, with his accustomed insight into the true 
trend of political forces, has recalled his country- 
men from the waking dreams of Free Trade in 
which they have too long indulged, and has 
brought them face to face with the stern realities 
of foreign competition." But meanwhile Quex had 
discovered that Protection was, as Lord Salisbury 



264 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

would have said, "the wrong horse," and that, 
if he wanted to win, he must stick to Free Trade. 
Quick as a weathercock in a cyclone, B. changed 
his tack. Quex was, as usual, perfectly right, 
and must be backed at all hazards. "We rejoice 
to see that Lord Quex has, with characteristic 
gallantry, stood forth as the champion of those 
who cannot defend themselves. Whoever en- 
deavours to tax the food of the people will have 
to pass to his base object over Lord Quex's dead 
body." 

In describing my third instance I will so far 
change my pseudonymous method as to say that 
C. was a Quidnunc who professed to possess the 
closest confidence of Mr. Gladstone. It will be 
remembered that George Glyn, second Lord 
Wolverton, was once Chief Whip of the Liberal 
Party, and always a most devoted adherent of 
Mr. Gladstone. He was a very rich man, and 
had no family ; and, when his death was an- 
nounced, a rumour, originating no doubt in a 
Quidnunc, ran through Club-land to the effect 
that he had left Mr. Gladstone a hundred thou- 
sand pounds as a token of personal and political 
loyalty. While this rumour was flying from 
mouth to mouth, C. entered the morning-room 
of his club, wearing an air of mystery and 
superior knowledge. A friend went up to him 
and said, "Now, C, you know everything. Is 
this story about Wolverton's will true ? " C.'s 
aspect of mystery deepened ; he laid his finger 



THE QUIDNUNC 265 

on his lip, and drew the questioner into the 
front hall. " I could not/' he said in a solemn 
undertone, "answer your question in the morn- 
ing-room, with all those men round us listening. 
But you are a friend of the G.O.M.'s, and so 
am I ; and I don't mind telling you the truth. 
,£100,000 is an exaggeration ; these things always 
get exaggerated. But you may take it from me 
that the G.O.M. comes into a very substantial 
sum." The delicate art with which this was 
done illustrated that " Lie with a Circumstance " 
on which the Quidnunc depends for a great part 
of his effectiveness ; for, as a matter of fact, Mr. 
Gladstone might have said of Lord Wolverton's 
will, as he said of his acquaintance with Messrs. 
Gilbey, that "he had not profited by it to the 
extent of a glass of light claret." 

So far I have spoken of Quidnuncs compara- 
tively ancient, for time moves quickly ; but the 
Quidnunc of to-day is quite as active, and quite 
as informing, and quite as untrustworthy, as his 
predecessors. A General Election and the for- 
mation of a Government are his harvest-time and 
his vintage ; they yield in rich abundance the 
supplies on which he lives. He will produce 
from his pocket - book a well - thumbed sheet, 
dated a year ago, and showing within three the 
precise figure of the Liberal majority. He knows 
the hidden currents of each constituency ; he can 
tell you why Mr. Lane-Fox recaptured Barkston 
Ash, and how Sir Edward Sassoon contrived to 



266 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

retain his seat at Hythe. As soon as Sir Henry 
Campbell - Bannerman received the King's com- 
mand, the Quidnunc was ready with a list of 
the new Cabinet ; though, with laudable reti- 
cence, he kept it tightly buttoned up in his 
breast-pocket. "Its there" he said, tapping his 
manly expanse of broadcloth. u It's there — every- 
thing except the Under Secretaryships ; and I 
can tell you that, when it comes out, you'll be 
astonished." 

Some curious questions suggest themselves to 
the reflective mind when it contemplates the Quid- 
nunc. How does he come by his information ? 
Does he go round the world button-holing and 
asking questions, and getting intentionally false 
answers for his pains ? Does he invent the 
whole story out of his head, as Smike thought 
that Mrs. Nickleby invented her reminiscences of 
polite society ? Does he tell his story so often 
that he comes to believe it himself ? When he 
is proved to have been entirely and absolutely 
wrong in a circumstantial statement of fact, does 
he feel ashamed ? These are questions which I 
cannot profess to answer. I take the Quidnunc 
as I find him, and I confess to a friendly feeling 
for him. I find that he adds to the gaiety and 
the resources of life, and I hold with Matthew 
Arnold that whatever does that is good. 



CHAPTER XXXIX 

THE COLLECTOR 

It is a relief to turn from the strife of politics— 
from caucusings and candidatures, triumphs and 
tragedies — to the " regions mild of calm and 
serene air" where the Collector dwells. The 
frenzy of a General Election sweeps past him 
like the idle wind which he regards not. He 
hears with "patient, deep disdain" the clamours 
of contending parties. His withers are unwrung 
by tales of Chinese Labour. The Big Loaf 
wakes no tumult in his tranquil breast. Whether 
Mr. Balfour will outwit Mr. Chamberlain or Mr. 
Chamberlain overcrow Mr. Balfour; what Lord 
Rosebery thinks of the new Cabinet, and how 
Mr. Birrell is to reconcile the claims of Arch- 
bishop Bourne and Dr. Clifford— all these ques- 
tions leave him cold. He warms to one subject 
only, and that is his COLLECTION. 

The Collector is a type which has many varie- 
ties. He may collect on a great or on a small 
scale ; he may accumulate fine works of art or 
heaps of hideous rubbish. He may glory in the 
enormous prices which he has given, or may be 

proud, with an even baser pride, of the sharp 

267 



268 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

practice which secured what he wanted for half 
its proper value. In these and in many other 
respects, Collector differs from Collector as star 
from star ; but all Collectors have this in com- 
mon — that each man loves and believes in his 
own Collection and makes it the principal object 
of his existence. 

The curious observer of human life may re- 
mark that the Collector is almost always a celi- 
bate, or, if he has been married before he took 
to Collecting, "the expulsive power of a new 
affection" soon asserts itself. As Pitt was mar- 
ried to his country, so is the Collector married 
to his Collection ; and a cracked teapot is a 
matter of more lively concern than a rickety 
child. A tendency to collect, manifested in early 
manhood, is a heavy blow and deep discour- 
agement to the operations of the matrimonial 
market. An experienced matron, well known for 
her successful energy in that line of business, 
once said to me with regard to an otherwise 
eligible bachelor : " No ; I have no hopes in 
that quarter. When once a man takes to collect- 
ing brass tobacco-boxes, I give him up." Some 
years ago I was visiting a Collector on the 
largest scale, who, having acquired some un- 
usually fine portraits of the English school, built 
a lordly pleasure-house to contain them. When 
we had made a peregrination of the house, 
which contained something worth looking at in 
every room and corridor, we ended our tour of 



THE COLLECTOR 269 

inspection in the Servants' Hall. It was of 
baronial proportions, and the walls were covered 

— "decorated" would not be the right word 

— with portraits of Georgian gentlemen in 
tight surtouts and satin stocks, and ladies with 
"fronts" and cameo brooches. Interpreting my 
glance of surprise, my host (whom we will call 
Mr. Neuchatel) replied with the most perfect 
affability : " These are my own family. As they 
made the money, I felt it would be ungrateful 
to burn them, and of course I could not mix 
them with my beautiful Gainsboroughs and Sir 
Joshuas ; so I put them here, and I believe the 
servants admire them very much." • 

But, after all, Collectors on the grand scale 
are comparatively rare, if only because there are 
only a limited number of first-class pictures in 
the market. But bad pictures are as plentiful as 
blackberries, and as widely diffused as microbes ; 
and the Collector of inferior art is a familiar 
figure on the social stage. Sydney Smith knew 
him in the flesh, as he existed at Manchester 
eighty and odd years ago. " Philips 1 doubles his 
capital twice a week, and talks much of cotton, 
more of the fine arts ; he has lately returned 
from Italy, and purchased some pictures which 
were sent out from Piccadilly on purpose to 
intercept him." Mr. Anstey Guthrie drew him 
and his Collection with a master-hand, when he 
described Mr. Bultitude sitting at his ease 

1 Sir George Philips, Bart. (1766- 1847). 



270 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

among his "dirty rabbis, fat white horses, 
bloated goddesses, and misshapen boors, by 
masters who, if younger than they assume to 
be, must have been quite old enough to know 
better." A Collector of the same class as Mr. 
Bultitude (though a much more amiable char- 
acter) was the excellent Mr. Meagles in "Little 
Dorrit," who displayed the cherished spoils of 
his Italian tour to the unsympathetic eyes of 
Arthur Clennam and Daniel Doyce. "Of his 
pictorial treasures Mr. Meagles spoke in the 
usual manner. He was no judge, he said, 
except of what pleased himself; he had picked 
them up dirt-cheap, and people had considered 
them rather fine. One man, who at any rate 
ought to know something of the subject, had 
declared that ' Sage, Reading' (a specially oily 
old gentleman in a blanket, with a swansdown 
tippet for a beard, and a web of cracks all over 
him like a rich pie-crust) to be a fine Guercino. 
As for Sebastian del Piombo there, you would 
judge for yourself; if it were not his later 
manner, the question was, Who was it? Titian 
— that might or might not be; perhaps he had 
only touched it. (Daniel Doyce said perhaps he 
hadn't touched it; but Mr. Meagles rather de- 
clined to hear the remark.)" 

The whole-hearted Collector of pictures, whether 
he be a Neuchatel or a Meagles, is ready to 
sacrifice not merely money but ease and con- 
venience and peace of mind to the divinity 



THE COLLECTOR 271 

which he adores. The statesman - connoisseur 
Lord Lansdowne always insisted on breakfasting 
in the drawing-room at Bowood, to the dis- 
traction of the housemaids and the discomfiture 
of the furniture, in order that he might see the 
morning light fall on the faces of his Correggios. 
The Lord Ashburton whom Carlyle honoured 
with his friendship used to travel with all his 
Titians and Raphaels in gigantic packing-cases. 
To traverse Europe with an itinerant picture- 
gallery was a performance worthy of an " Eng- 
lish Milor " ; but society said that the thing was 
overdone when Baron Pinto had packing-cases 
made for the vases on his chimney-piece, so that, 
whether he took his annual cure at Buxton or 
at Homburg, he might still draw light and in- 
spiration from the contemplation of Green 
Sevres, and might forget the terrors of black 
horsehair and crimson flock in the society of 
Dresden Shepherdesses. The Collectors of rare 
and beautiful things may, by a stretch of charity, 
be regarded as benefactors of their species, 
especially if they leave their Collections to the 
nation. The collection of precious stones is one 
of the most fascinating sports in the world, and 
collections of autographs — even of book-plates — 
are extolled by their devotees as illuminating the 
dark places of history. But nothing can be 
urged in exculpation of the Collectors of rubbish. 
Byron made savage fun of the " noseless blocks" 
which the conoscenti of his time imported in 



272 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

cartloads, and we may turn again to Dickens for a 
later description of what perverted ingenuity can 
collect. "There were antiquities from Central 
Italy made by the best modern houses in that 
department of industry ; bits of mummy from 
Egypt (and perhaps from Birmingham), model 
gondolas from Venice, model villages from 
Switzerland, morsels of tessellated pavement from 
Herculaneum and Pompeii like petrified minced 
veal ; ashes out of tombs, and lava out of 
Vesuvius." The Tapling Collection of Postage 
Stamps, valued at £50,000, gives the Political 
Economist food for thought. A lady whose house 
was raided by the police a few years ago was 
found to have amassed a unique collection of 
Messrs. Gunter's teaspoons, abstracted from wed- 
ding parties at which she had been an uninvited 
guest ; but this form of collecting was stig- 
matized as Kleptomania. 

It has been observed time out of mind that the 
horse, though the noblest of animals, produces 
the most demoralizing effect on the nature of 
those who cultivate him. It is the same with 
some forms of Collecting. If any sort of accumu- 
lation is to be tolerated, the accumulation of 
books would seem the most blameless ; yet the 
true book-collector is notoriously a snapper-up 
of unconsidered trifles ; and he who possesses a 
rare, or valuable, or curious book acts discreetly 
if he keeps it under lock and key. The cult 
of china, with its gentle associations of maiden- 



THE COLLECTOR 273 

aunts and tea-tables and country-houses and 
Charles Lamb, should surely be the most inno- 
cent of all. Yet a host and hostess, who enter- 
tain society in a beautifully complete Adam house 
not twenty miles from London, have been forced 
to place all their best china under glass. After 
every garden-party some vase or coffee-cup was 
missing. These acts of larceny must add a 
singular zest to the Collector's life ; but, after 
all, they are exceptional. Of course, in the main 
Collections are formed by purchase ; but purchase, 
where a Collection is concerned, is not always 
quite so straightforward a business as it sounds. 

Baron Pinto collects china. The china-mender 
is his emissary. " Whenever you see a bit which 
you think I should like, offer for it. Never mind 
if they kick you out of the house. If you can 
get it, you will have your commission." Mr 
Perfumo, of South Africa and Park Lane, col- 
lects Romneys, or Rembrandts, or snuff-boxes, 
or buhl furniture, or any other necessary of 
polite life which you choose to name. His 
agents are the dealers, who travel all over Eng- 
land in pursuit of business, make their way into 
unsuspecting households, and offer tempting prices 
or convenient exchanges. A case in point recurs 
to my memory. Some years ago a nobleman 
well known in Cheshire was journeying from 
Euston to Crewe. He had one companion 
in the carriage — a conversable gentleman, who 
offered him Punch or Truth, and made ap- 

s 



274 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

propriate remarks about landscape and agri- 
culture. Seasoned with these delights, the three 
hours jpassed like one ; and, as they neared the 

journey's end, Lord said, in the fulness of 

his hospitable heart, " If you are making any 
stay in Cheshire, pray come and pay me a visit. 
Any one in Cheshire will tell you where I live. 
Always delighted to see you." The conversable 
traveller, who was in fact one of the most famous 
dealers in London, accepted the invitation. He 
stayed, I believe, only one night ; but the result 

was that Lord 's house was denuded of every 

beautiful or valuable article which it contained, 
and that all his ancestors and ancestresses now 
adorn the baronial halls of Mr. Perfumo. They 

were replaced by modern copies, and Lord , 

after recounting what he got for them, used to 
say, with a cheerful chuckle, " I assure you, you 
would never know the difference " — which, as 
regards the bulk of his neighbours, was pro- 
bably true enough. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE CITY MAN 

The City Man is of all sorts and sizes. Walking 
by chance on the Sacred Way of the Thames 
Embankment, I have just seen him, in several 
aspects, on his way to that Tom Tiddler's 
Ground where, as Mr. Mantalini pleasantly 
observed, he "picks up the demnition gold and 
silver." As I gazed on him the fire burned, and 
I felt that he must be our next portrait. A City 
Man, perhaps more renowned for sharpness than 
for scruples, said to a "Cheery Boy," as they 
parted one night on the steps of the club : " Well, 
I must go home and get to bed. I have to be up 
early in the morning, for I work for my living. 
I suppose you are going to a couple of balls, for 
I know you are a bird of pleasure." "Yes, old 
chap," replied the Cheery Boy, not the least awed 
by the man of millions ; " I'm a bird of pleasure, 
and you're a bird of prey." On the Embankment 
this morning these Birds of Prey were congre- 
gated as thick as the seagulls on the Thames in 
a frost. I leaned against the parapet and marked 

the long procession. I can scarcely say that " I 

275 



276 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

bless'd them unaware/' for the emotions which 
they awoke in me were not benedictory; but I 
gazed and meditated. 

First came a well-appointed brougham with 
a foreign coronet on the panel, and, inside, a 
gentleman wrapped in sables, whose expressive 
profile and colossal cigar were silhouetted 
against the window of the carriage. He aptly 
headed the procession, for he was one of those 
whom Lord Beaconsfield used to call "the Pala- 
dins of High Finance." He finds his prey in 
nations which wish to go to war with one 
another and require the assistance of a Loan ; in 
continents with mineral resources which need 
developing ; in Princes and Crowned Heads 
reduced to the vulgar necessity of paying their 
tradesmen. His business, in short, is on the 
grandest scale ; yet your true Bird of Prey con- 
descends to profits however insignificant ; and a 
fashionable woman in difficulties about her dress- 
maker's bill finds him as ready a listener as if 
she were the Chancellor of the Exchequer or 
Mr. Pierpont Morgan's agent. The skilful hand 
of " F. C. G." immortalized the personal appear- 
ance of this gentleman as "the Throgmorton 
Street Patriot" in the series of "People who 
thought it would be so easy" at the beginning of 
the South African War. " Buy 'em, my vrend — 
buy ^m till you're black in the face. Vy, it'll be 
all over in a week ven we get out there." 

Just after the coronetted brougham came, two 



THE CITY MAN 277 

abreast, the buggies and phaetons of adventurous 
youth. Smart young fellows, "well groomed," as 
the newspapers say, with large bunches of violets in 
their button-holes and cigarettes in their mouths, 
they drive with careless grace, and launch airy 
imprecations at the motors of more elderly 
financiers, which make their horses shy and 
poison the air with petrol fumes. The Paladin 
in the brougham was not an attractive-looking 
object, but these young stockbrokers are pleasant- 
seeming lads, full of good temper and high spirits, 
and apparently on the best of terms with them- 
selves and the world. The aged moralist, propped 
against the parapet, heaves a sigh when he thinks 
of youth and vigour and capacity sacrificed to the 
Moloch of money-making, and ponders on the 
strange phenomenon that every lewd and blas- 
phemous joke which circulates in debauched 
Society is always said to be "the latest thing from 
the Stock Exchange." Before we turn to more 
humble practitioners, it may be remarked in pass- 
ing that the practice of going to the City in a 
carriage is a departure from tradition. A partner 
in one of the greatest banks in two continents 
used every morning to toddle from his palace 
in Carlton House Terrace, plant himself firmly 
on the pavement by the Guards' Monument, 
and hail the passing 'bus with a very business- 
like umbrella. " I keep carriages and horses," 
he used to say, "for my wife and daughters, 
but carriages are out of place in the City. A 



278 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

business man should always go to business by 
the 'bus." 

Indeed, the Banker, however good his business 
may be, is generally a quiet and modest sort of 
gentleman. The customers don't like arrogance 
or display, but they respect and trust solid com- 
fort. So the Banker eschews the thoroughfares of 
fashion, makes his nest in some quiet corner of 
Paddington or South Kensington, and gives large 
dinner-parties of a grave and conventional type. 
The guests as a rule are not politicians, for poli- 
tics are inimical to business. The Army and 
Navy are regarded as a little wild, and Science, 
Literature, and Art are considered barely re- 
spectable. So the Banker's guests are chiefly 
other bankers, happily mingled with brewers, 
stockjobbers, dealers in precious metals, railway 
directors, underwriters, wharfingers, K.C.'s, solici- 
tors, and such-like solid men, living peaceably 
in their habitations, and keeping comfortable 
balances at their banks. Almost always a clergy- 
man of Low Church principles says grace over 
these serious banquets, for, as Archbishop Benson 
long ago observed, "There is something in 
Evangelicalism, as it exists now, which is very 
concordant with wealth." 

The types which we have been considering 
— the Loanmonger, the Stockbroker, and the 
Banker — -have their rocognized sphere and func- 
tion. Every one knows what they are, and has 
some faint conception of what they do. But 



THE CITY MAN 279 

there is an immense array of people who may 
be classed under the title of "City Men," and 
about whom their friends and neighbours know 
absolutely nothing beyond the fact that they 
repair to the City every day after breakfast and 
return with great regularity in time for dinner. 
The mystery which surrounds the intermediate 
hours has suggested various possibilities in 
fiction. Dickens conceived the fascinating shop- 
assistant who, disguised as a spark of fashion, 
won all hearts at suburban dances. If his shop 
was east of Temple Bar, he was a City Man. 
Thackeray imagined a crossing-sweeper who plied 
his daily task far from the aristocratic quarter in 
which he dined and danced — he, too, was a City 
Man. Disraeli pictured the Apollo-like pugilist 
who fought his way from the Minories to Carlton 
Gardens, and then, plunging into finance, became 
a City Man in a second sense. I myself have 
known a steady-going gentleman, with all the 
outward signs of prudent opulence, whose busi- 
ness in the City turned out to be the modest 
craft of covering umbrellas ; and I once heard 
enthusiastic praise of a cultured youth who called 
himself a " Waterworks Engineer," and was subse- 
quently discovered to be a Turncock. 

An even more remarkable instance of the City 
Man was brought to light not long ago in con- 
nexion with some extensive forgeries. This gentle- 
man lived in a trim villa in one of our genteelest 
suburbs, subscribed handsomely to local objects, 



280 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

and sometimes carried the bag in church. By 
profession he was " Something in the City." That 
was all, and that was enough. Eventually Scot- 
land Yard discovered that he kept a bureau for 
would-be forgers. A youth who thought he had a 
turn that way would call at the bureau, show 
specimens of his art, copy a signature or two 
under the principal's eye, and then receive counsel 
about his future. If he was utterly clumsy and 
hopeless, he was bowed out as soon as the fee 
was paid, and recommended to try some other 
line. If he showed talent, he was set to copying ; 
and, after a longer or shorter course, according to 
his aptitude, was pronounced a qualified expert. 
But the resources of the bureau did not end there. 
The principal made it his business to know the 
banks at which the clerks were most careless in 
scrutinizing signatures ; where the rich kept their 
accounts; who were notoriously careless in look- 
ing at their pass-books ; and all other forms of 
information which a conscientious forger should 
learn and know for his soul's health. This sounds 
like a fairy-tale, but the Solicitor to the Treasury 
knew that it was a fact, and I think it not unlikely 
that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle may have had the 
story in mind when he elaborated Moriarty and 
the Murder-Bureau in " Sherlock Holmes." 

But I have wandered far from the Thames 
Embankment and the City-ward procession which 
passed by me this morning. There was not, I 
fancy, much romance about the City Men, old 



THE CITY MAN 281 

or young, on whom I gazed. The love of money 
is, as the Revised Version says, a root of all evils, 
and among those evils is an incredible and appal- 
ling dulness. There is, I think, no kind of conver- 
sation known to man — not House of Commons 
humour, or boating-shop, or shooters' recollections 
— which can for a moment compete in point of 
dulness with the habitual discourse of the genuine 
City Man. True it is that there are members of 
the class who chatter of sport, and plays, and 
pictures ; but they are comparatively few, and their 
interest in these things is superficial and their talk 
unreal. The genuine City Man talks of money. 
What is so and so worth ? What did he start 
with ? How much did he lose in Kaffirs ? What 
did he give for that place he bought in Kent ? 
How has he been doing at Newmarket ? How 
long will he be able to keep it up at this rate ? 
Did he get any money with his wife ? What does 
he give his daughters ? And so the stream flows 
on. It takes its rise in money ; through money 
it runs its course ; in money it ends ; but only 
ends to begin again to-morrow. Of all forms of 
idolatry, the worship of the Golden Calf is cer- 
tainly the most depressing ; and yet for its devotees 
it seems to be the most absolutely enthralling, 
and it has the singular power of awakening a 
kind of imaginative faculty in the most austerely 
literal minds. The mere thought of money seems 
to kindle a form of megalomania ; for every one 
who talks about other people's money habitually 



282 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

exaggerates. There seems to be an unholy plea- 
sure in the mere mention of prodigious sums, even 
though the speaker is wondering at the moment 
how he is to pay the jobmaster's bill and whether 
he can afford to take his family to the seaside 
this year. 



CHAPTER XLI 

THE PHILANTHROPIST 

Love, Serve. It was a happy accident which 
made this magnificent motto the hereditary 
cognizance of the Great Lord Shaftesbury. Not 
long ago I encountered an Oxford Undergraduate, 
a little flushed with intellectual success, who 
maintained, with the calm assurance of his age 
and class, that " the Great Lord Shaftesbury " 
was a very proper designation of the third Earl, 
who was a philosopher, and that it might even 
be fairly applied to the first Earl, who was a 
politician ; but that to bestow it on the seventh 
Earl, who was merely a Philanthropist, was a 
misuse of words. 

Thus Young Oxford ; but by the time that 
my friend has taken his degree it is to be hoped 
that his eyes will have been opened to see the 
transcendent greatness of Social Service. It is 
a commonplace of patriotism to extol the philan- 
thropic labours of John Howard and William 
Wilberforce and Fowell Buxton. Lord Shaftes- 
bury himself (in spite of my young friend's adverse 
iudgment) has his assured place on the bede-roll 

of the men who have made England glorious. 

283 



284 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

But it may be doubted whether we duly recognize 
the devotion and the services of the men who 
are Philanthropists to-day. Kossuth did homage 
to the lt unnamed demigods " who fought for 
Freedom and Nationality against the tyranny of 
armed power. The Social War against misery 
and ignorance and filth has its ventures, its 
repulses, and its triumphs, as signal as those 
which belong to political or racial strife ; its 
leaders are " the faithful who are not famous," 
and its rewards, as a rule, are posthumous. 

I could name plenty of men, and women too, 
who are daily spending themselves with reckless 
prodigality in the social service of Humanity, 
and yet whose names, if they were proclaimed 
from the platform of Exeter Hall, would not 
elicit a single cheer. Such a man was Edward 
Denison, the cultivated M.P., who first tried the 
experiment of living in the slums ; such was 
Theodore Talbot, the "young man of great 
possessions," who did so much for the social 
work of St. Alban's, Holborn. It is easy enough, 
and in some ways natural enough, to deplore 
the degeneracy of the race and to prophesy woe 
and destruction for a State which is passing 
through a stage of development such as that 
which was marked by the General Election of 
1906. The best corrective for despondency is 
to know the forces which are working for good. 
The clearest disproof of degeneracy is the activity 
of virtue. The surest safeguard against civil 



THE PHILANTHROPIST 285 

dissolution is the labour of the men and women 
who spend their life in healing social sores, and 
knitting human hearts together with those " cords 
of a man" which are " bands of love." Let me 
give, in passing, just one illustration of what I 
mean. 

The year 1867 had far more resemblance to 
a year of revolution than 1906. The artisans of 
England had just become enfranchized citizens. 
A republican spirit — how engendered it is not 
now necessary to enquire — had asserted itself in 
English politics. The Fenian Conspiracy was 
active, and was reinforced by auxiliary movements 
on the Continent and in the United States. For 
the first time for thirty years the foundations of 
society seemed to be shaken. In December, 
1867, Matthew Arnold wrote: "We are in a 
strange, uneasy state in London. To double 
the police on duty and to call out Special 
Constables seems a strange way of dealing with 
an enemy who is not likely to come in force 
into the streets, and who really needs a good 
secret police to track his operations." At this 
season of disturbance and anxiety, Lord Shaftes- 
bury was sitting alone one evening in his library 
in Grosvenor Square, when the servant came 
in and said that a working man from Clerken- 
well wished to see his Lordship. His Lord- 
ship was well used to strange visitors at strange 
hours, so the man was promptly shown in. As 
soon as he and Lord Shaftesbury were alone 



286 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

together, he said : a My Lord, you have been 
a good friend to some of us, and I have come 
to tell you something which you ought to know. 
There's a Fenian plot to blow up Clerkenwell 
Prison. I have overheard the plotting going on 
in the back room of the Public-house where 
I spend my evenings, and I thought I ought 
to let you know. But, of course, if you gave 
up my| name I should be a dead man." It is 
true that the authorities at Whitehall, with 
characteristic ineptitude, refused to take cog- 
nizance of the ^information, unless Lord Shaftes- 
bury would give the name and address of his 
informant. So the plot was duly carried out ; 
the prison-wall was blown down ; the street was 
wrecked ; six people were killed outright, six 
more died of the explosion, and 120 more were 
wounded. But this triumph of officialism does 
not impair the fact that Lord Shaftesbury's 
philanthropic labours had put into the hands 
of Government — if only it had chosen to use 
them — -the means of crushing a murderous and 
treasonable conspiracy. 

The Philanthropist, whom I know and the world 
ignores, is to be found alike in town and country, 
in various grades of society and in all sorts of 
professions. He may belong to either political 
party or stand aloof from all ; may adhere to 
any religious body or to none. The Philan- 
thropic Aristocrat has been done to death in 
fiction and in verse. Let Lord Vieuxbois and 



THE PHILANTHROPIST 287 

Lord Lynedale and Romney Leigh sleep with 
their fathers ; they were excellent people in their 
day, but that day has passed. The Philanthropic 
Aristocrat of the present period is commonly a 
sound man of business. He does not rely for 
Social Reform on Anglo-Catholic tracts or cheap 
reproductions of sacred pictures ; still less does 
he wish to abolish the House of Lords, or to 
melt all social orders into one. But he works 
like a galley-slave at his property. If it is in a 
town, he helps his tenants exactly where they 
cannot help themselves, rights the Local Autho- 
rity for good drainage and water-supply, and 
breaks his heart over the hideous obduracy of 
the middleman who has got a long lease of his 
houses and is growing fat on the profits of the 
slums. If he is a country Landowner, in spite 
of falling rents and agricultural depression he 
toils to keep his cottages in good repair, sets 
his face like a flint against overcrowding, re- 
duces the rents of his allotments in bad times, 
and does whatever lies in his power to maintain 
or revive the old quasi-feudal sentiment which 
once animated rural life. 

But the gainsayer might remark that, after all, 
the Landowner has not much to do except to 
amuse himself, and that to him philanthropy may 
be merely a pleasant way of passing his time. 
This ungracious sneer cannot be aimed at the 
professional man who, after a hard day's work in 
a merchant's office or a law-court, gives his scanty 



288 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

leisure to philanthropic work. Such a man was 
the late Mr. Quintin Hogg, who for forty years 
was an Earthly Providence to the working lads 
of London. 

Men of this type abound, and they are just 
the men whose work, as a rule, passes unre- 
cognized. I know Bankers who, after a stiff 
day in Lombard Street, will snatch a hasty chop 
or a cup of tea and then plunge for the evening 
into the tumult of a Working Man's Club or the 
tedium of a Sanitary Committee. I know young 
men at the Bar and in the Civil Service who 
turn their backs on the most alluring dances, 
decline invitations to dinner, and reduce their 
theatre-going to a minimum, in order that they 
may teach shoeblacks to box or newspaper boys 
to sing part-songs. And, besides the sacrifice of 
hard-earned leisure, there is the systematic and 
unseen sacrifice of money. Many a professional 
man, who earns not very much more than is 
required for the necessities of home and family, 
will retrench his personal expenditure to the 
narrowest limits — wear old clothes, travel third- 
class, and choose the cheapest luncheon at the 
Club — in order that he may give more largely 
to causes which he believes to be deserving. 
He may be cheated and disappointed once and 
again, but nothing chills his ardour or checks 
his generosity. And certainly it is bare justice 
to enumerate among the Philanthropists of the 
present day that noble array of Women, married 



THE PHILANTHROPIST 289 

and single, who toil so patiently and so bravely 
for the girls and young women of our great 
cities. For surely the woman who trains the 
future mothers of English citizens in the ways of 
modesty, gentleness, and refinement is helping to 
purify, as no other agency can purify it, the 
fountain of our national life. Truly said George 
Eliot : u The growing good of the world is 
partly dependent on unhistoric acts ; and that 
things are not so ill with you and me as they 
might have been is half owing to the number 
who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in 
unvisited tombs." 



CHAPTER XLII 

THE PROFESSIONAL PHILANTHROPIST 

"We must never forget that, alongside of any 
great truth, there is certain to be a sham and 
a counterfeit of that truth." So said Charles 
Kingsley in his celebrated sermon on Liberty, 
Fraternity, and Equality. a Wherever," said Car- 
dinal Newman, "the true Jerusalem is built, there 
is a Samaria close at hand." As is the reality 
to the counterfeit — as were the Chosen People 
to their alien and degenerate neighbours, — so is 
the true Philanthropist, whom we have just de- 
scribed to the character indicated at the head of 
this chapter. 

The Professional Philanthropist is not a desir- 
able person, but he plays so considerable a part 
in modern life that he deserves at least a passing 
recognition. How is he bred ? Where does 
he come from ? What was he before he became 
a Philanthropist ? To these questions, expressed 
or implied, he is rather shy of giving an answer. 
Perhaps (like Mr. Creakle) he has failed as a 
hop-merchant in the Borough, and, having made 
a mess of his own affairs, takes to lecturing 

on Thrift, Co-operation, and Social Economics. 

290 



THE PROFESSIONAL PHILANTHROPIST 291 

Perhaps he is a barrister who has missed his 
mark with judges and juries, but finds a vent 
for his too-fluent eloquence at Church Congresses 
or meetings of the Christian Social Union. Per- 
haps he is a journalist who has written a sensa- 
tional description of "An Opium-Den in Poplar" 
or "A Day's Drudgery in the Deptford Cattle- 
Market." Perhaps he has never done a stroke 
of work in his life, but has subsisted from his 
youth up on the misplaced hospitality of the 
weakly benevolent, who consider him an inter- 
esting young man, give him the run of their 
houses in London, and entertain him for weeks 
together at their country homes. It is a sad but 
an undeniable fact that a great leader of philan- 
thropy is generally surrounded by a court of 
parasites and toadies. Himself incapable of 
worldliness or baseness or self-seeking, he does 
not realize that these qualities flourish luxuriantly 
among his followers and adherents. A thoroughly 
unworldly man, rich, kind-hearted, and not ob- 
servant, attracts humbugs and hypocrites as a 
sponge sucks water. Let us trace the operation 
of this natural law. 

Tom Garbage has lived, ever since he grew up, 
by his wits, which, it is only fair to say, are not 
contemptible. He has dabbled in " London 
Letters," and has harangued at Debating Societies 
He can write a little and speak a little ; knows 
a good deal about the seamy side of London, and 
has a quick eye for men and movements. He 



292 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

passes through life in persistent quest of one 
supremely desirable object, and this object he 
would, in his own racy vernacular, describe as 
a 4t Mug." Sooner or later, he sees exactly what 
he wants, and springs at it with a prompt alacrity 
which is really, in its way, creditable. 

Lord A., a genuine philanthropist, presides at 
a public meeting to promote, say, the Reform 
of our Prison System. He speaks with sincerity 
and animation, and warmly invites co-operators 
in the good work to which he has set his hand. 
The Times gives a full report of his speech, 
and next morning he receives a letter from 
Tom Garbage. Tom begins, with a well-turned 
apology for his intrusion, and says that, after 
hearing his Lordship's burning words, he can- 
not refrain from placing his services, such as 
they are, at the disposal of the Cause. He 
has studied the subject in all its bearings, has 
strong theories on Recidivism, and hints at ac- 
quaintance with interesting Ticket-of-Leave Men 
who could give invaluable information as to the 
inner working of the system. Here, obviously, 
is the man whom Lord A. wants, and, in the 
warmth of his generous heart, he writes to thank 
Tom Garbage for his welcome letter, and would 
be very glad to see him at luncheon one day, if 
he were passing Grosvenor Square about two 
o'clock. Tom needs no second bidding ; and 
having in the meantime got up his subject in the 
Public Library, he duly presents himself at Lord 



THE PROFESSIONAL PHILANTHROPIST 293 

A.'s luncheon-table. His host draws him out, and 
explains him to the other guests. "This is Mr. 
Garbage, who has made a special study of Prison 
Reform. I think you would be interested to hear 
his views." And then Tom launches out on the 
perilous voyage of romantic narrative, steers his 
course adroitly, and creates a most favourable im- 
pression. Social Reformers are very accessible 
on the emotional side, and, when properly moved, 
are not too exacting about tiresome details. From 
these small beginnings Tom dates his career as 
a Professional Philanthropist. The movement 
spreads. Duchesses take it up, Drawing-room 
meetings are held in well-known houses. Lectures 
are addressed to fashionable audiences in West 
End halls. At all these Tom is the lion. Lord A., 
whose hands are really full of social work, cannot 
comply with a tithe of the requests for a speech ; 
and in excusing himself he writes : u My friend 
Mr. Thomas Garbage would be a much more 
effective exponent of the case than I can be, for 
his knowledge of it is more intimate and more 
recent, and he has an eloquence to which I can 
lay no claim." So Tom soon makes his way into 
the innermost circles of benevolent society ; gets 
his luncheon for nothing six days out of seven : 
dines three times a week at philanthropic houses, 
and is overwhelmed with invitations for the 
autumn. "Do you think you are likely to be in 
the north any time after August ? We are thinking 
of getting up a meeting at Drumble, and, if only 



294 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

we could persuade you to speak, it would give 
the movement such a splendid start. Do come." 
" I know it is a dreadful shame to ask you to come 
all the way down to Cornwall. But feeling is very 
strong at the Land's End, and, if you have never 
spoken to a Cornish audience, you would enjoy 
the experience, I'm sure." Thus Tom becomes 
the official orator of the Prison Reform Movement, 
and it is not his fault if he does not make his 
oratory pay. 

Or take the case of Mr. B., the Evangelical 
banker. His hobby is the Housing of the Poor ; 
he has contributed largely to Model Dwellings, 
and has shares in the Garden City. He is an 
extremely busy man, and it is impossible for him 
to give much personal attention to enterprises 
outside his business, however much he may be- 
lieve in them. He looks about for some one who 
will act as his almoner and agent, investigate 
slums, draw up reports, and administer funds. 
Returning in the train from Lombard Street to 
Putney, he reads in his evening paper a vivid 
sketch called " Dreams in a Doss-house, by One 
Who has Dreamed Them." Being a practical 
man, he makes a note of the signature, and next 
morning writes to the dreamer, under cover to 
the editor, suggesting an interview in Lombard 
Street at an early date. Tom arrives, a little 
perplexed, but soon takes the measure of his 
man, and replies shortly, clearly, and cheerfully 
to the enquiring banker. Encouraged by that 



THE PROFESSIONAL PHILANTHROPIST 295 

good man's attention, he comes quickly to the 
point. "The fact is that I can't afford to do 
this work for nothing. I have my profession, 
and I must live by it. But if you would like 
me to undertake this slum-work for you, I am 
quite prepared to take ^300 a year and my ex- 
penses and lay my profession aside. Is it a 
bargain ? " It is ; and next year Tom Garbage is 
examined before a Mansion House Committee as 
an expert authority on the Housing of the Poor ; 
and, when the philanthropic world persuades the 
Government to appoint a Royal Commission 
on the subject, one of the Commissioners is 
sure to be "our trusty and well-beloved Thomas 
Garbage." Sic itur ad astra. We need not pursue 
the flight. 

Then again there is the Opulent Woman, 
widow or spinster, who honestly desires to serve 
some good work of moral or material reform. 
" The Destitute Orange-girl, the Neglected Washer- 
woman, the Distressed Mufhnman, find in her a 
fast and generous friend " ; but she realizes the 
responsibilities of wealth, knows by sad experience 
how easily one may be deceived, and feels herself 
handicapped and helpless without the assistance 
of a man. Tom Garbage, who saw her melt 
under his eloquence at Lady A.'s drawing-room 
meeting or took her in to dinner at one of Mr. 
B.'s serious banquets, early marked her for his 
own. In a case like this his progress lacks the 
excitement of adventure — it is almost shamefully 



296 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

easy and unhindered. Acquaintance soon ripens 
into friendship. Before long he becomes Mrs. 
C.'s philanthropic conscience. All applications 
for help are referred to him, and he speaks out 
of the very heart of the oracle. "Well, you see 
that Mrs. C. is placed in a very peculiar position. 
Certainly she has great wealth, but the calls on 
her are literally incessant. She is good enough 
to set some store on my judgment, and I am 
bound, of course, to safeguard her interests ; and 
this year I have been advising her rather to 
curtail than increase her present outlay on charit- 
able objects. I know how sorry she will be to 
say No to any request of yours, but really it is 
inevitable." 

Sometimes, however, the opposite policy is 
pursued. A Royal Personage becomes warmly 
interested in a scheme for a Convalescent Hospi- 
tal or an Inebriates' Home. Tom Garbage sees 
his market, and urges Mrs. C. to subscribe 
largely. When the auspicious day of stone-laying 
arrives, Tom figures very conspicuously in the 
ceremonies. It is he who hands the Princess 
from her carriage, presents her with the mystic 
trowel, and, at the close, proposes a vote of thanks 
in a happily -phrased oration. His expressive 
eyes sparkle, he pushes his hair back from his 
thoughtful forehead, and there is a quaver in his 
voice when he speaks of the miseries which the 
Institution is intended to relieve. An admiring 
murmur runs round the tent. "What a striking- 



THE PROFESSIONAL PHILANTHROPIST 207 

looking young man ! and how well he speaks ! " 
"Do you know him? Who is he?" "Oh! he 
is the man who has done so much for the fund. 
I hear that half of Mrs. C.'s donation was really 
his, only he cannot bear anything like publicity 
or praise." "How very interesting, and so un- 
common ! " " Oh, Mr. Garbage, would you mind 
coming this way ? The Princess wishes to speak 
to you. I have the honour of presenting to 
your Royal Highness Mr. Garbage, who has done 
so much for our work here." Tom makes his 
best bow ; a few gracious words fall on his 
enraptured ear ; and he finds himself numbered 
among the lights of the philanthropic firmament. 
When the Institution is opened, the odds are 
that "T. Garbage, Esq," is gazetted as Secretary 
and General Manager at a salary of £500 a 
year ; and when, a year or two later, he marries 
Mrs. C.'s orphan niece, he discovers, to his 
astonishment, that her father left her £20,000. 
Thus, even in this hard world, Virtue is some- 
times its own reward, and Philanthropy need not 
always imply self-abnegation. 



CHAPTER XLIII 

THE TOADY 

This familiar but unpleasing type evolves itself 
by a natural process from the Professional Phil- 
anthropist. For, until Tom Garbage establishes 
himself in that salaried post on which he has 
always had his eye, he is, by the very necessity 
of the case, a Toady. What is a Toady ? ask 
some who ought to know the answer pretty well. 
"Toady," the modern lexicographers tell us, is 
contracted from "Toad-eater," and Dr. Johnson 
defines the Toad-eater as "a mountebank's man, 
one of whose duties was to swallow, or pretend 
to swallow, any kind of garbage." The Toad- 
eater presumably was paid for his unpalatable 
art ; and so his successor, the Toady, is content 
to perform some very undignified antics in con- 
sideration of substantial advantages to be gained 
by his humiliation. 

The Toady lives by flattery, and no one who 
has anything to give can reckon on being safe 
from his attentions. He pervades Society from 
its summit to its base. Let us begin on the 
highest level, and consider the Toady as he 

appears in the empyreal atmosphere which sur- 

298 



THE TOADY 299 

rounds the Throne. Here the Toady is called a 
courtier ; and, if he is successful in the practice 
of his arts, he is applauded and admired for 
exactly the same qualities which, if displayed in 
an inferior sphere, would be called contemptible 
and base. " Every one likes flattery," said Lord 
Beaconsfield, who knew what he was talking 
about, u and when you come to Royalty you 
should lay it on with a trowel." His practice 
exactly accorded with his theory, and, when he 
bracketed the most illustrious Personage in the 
realm with himself under the designation " We 
authors," he seemed to reach the highest flight 
of successful toadyism. Courtiership produces in 
all natures, except the very strongest and purest, 
a mean admiration for mean things, a doglike 
devotion to quite unworthy persons, and a pre- 
ternatural interest in sayings and doings too 
trivial to engage the serious attention of a Kin- 
dergarten. The characteristics which Thackeray 
and Leech regarded as the peculiar property of 
domestic servants are reproduced with amusing 
exactness in courtly circles. Some years ago a Lord 
Steward was chatting to a Mistress of the Robes 
about his last visit to Windsor. He had carried 
down an Address from the House of Lords, and had 
eaten his midday meal under the Royal roof. " I 
was quite shocked by the Household luncheon," 
he declared, with tears in his voice. " I assure 
you, my dear Duchess, there was nothing on the 
table but a roast hare and a leg of boiled pork."" 



300 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

It was the genuine lamentation of a soul trained 
to higher things, and it would have come quite 
naturally from Major Pendennis's Morgan when 
he exchanged the splendours of Stillbrook for the 
modest housekeeping of Fairoaks. 

Then, of course, Prime Ministers are, in a very 
special way, the objects of the Toady's attentions. 
" If you take a large buzzing bluebottle-fly and 
look at it in a microscope, you may see twenty 
or thirty little ugly insects crawling about it, 
which doubtless think their fly to be the bluest, 
grandest, merriest, most important animal in the 
universe, and are convinced that the world would 
be at an end if it ceased to buzz." That was 
Sydney Smith's picturesque way of describing a 
Premier's parasites, and the lapse of a century 
has not materially changed the type. It would be 
invidious to describe individual toadies whom I 
have seen plying their pleasing pranks on suc- 
cessive Prime Ministers, and I must seek safety 
in generalizations. There are Private Secretaries, 
each passionately convinced that his Bluebottle is 
the grandest creature in the realm of being, and 
that he will not " cease to buzz" until he has 
provided all his parasites with well-paid offices in 
the public service. There are obsequious doctors, 
tenth-rate men of letters or science, promotion- 
seeking clergymen, and journalists who can be 
bought by invitations to evening parties. 

" Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call 
Ye to each other make " 



THE TOADY 301 

and the burden of that call is always the same : 
" Let us flatter our Bluebottle to the top of his 
bent. Let us assure him, day and night, that 
he is the wisest, ablest, and noblest of mankind. 
Let us inspire pamphlets and organize puffs, stop 
every chink in Downing Street against the wintry 
breath of criticism, and make our great man be- 
lieve that the country is in love with him, and 
that no other Administration than his is even 
conceivable." These devices are not thrown 
away. As a rule, the Toady gets what he wants, 
which is ;£iooo a year, though, even in the hour 
of triumph, he is apt to be a little jealous of his 
brother-Toady who, with less merit, has secured 
£1500. But the Bluebottle, made heady by the 
fumes of toadyism, goes blundering to his doom, 
and wakes up some fine morning to find himself 
out of office, and perhaps out of Parliament as 
well. It is the end of the Bluebottle, but the 
Parasite is safe. 

Bishops, again, are much pursued by Toadies. 
The Domestic Chaplain must be made of excep- 
tionally manly stuff if he can resist the atmosphere 
in which he lives ; avoid " drop-down-dead-ative- 
ness " of manner ; and forget that each daughter 
of the episcopal household carries a living in her 
pocket. A living — yes, and something more than 
a living ; for have we not seen a promoted chap- 
lain work his sinuous way to the Decanal Stall 
and the Episcopal Throne ? 

Many and various are the baits by which good 



302 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

men are allured into the trap of toadyism. An 
Honorary Canonry would seem to be the very 
most illusory and unsubstantial of all earthly 
distinctions ; and yet we have all known clergy- 
men, in other respects exemplary, abjure the 
principles and practices of a lifetime, and for- 
swear old friends in favour of new diocesans, 
for the poor reward of being called Canon, in- 
stead of Mr., Demas. 

The Philanthropist, as I said before, is usually 
encompassed by a great cloud of Toadies. If 
Lord A. is a fanatical teetotaller, Tom Garbage 
poses as a very Rechabite. He traces the thin 
quality of the learning which he brought with 
him from Crichton House to the fact that his 
infant brain was stupefied by the ardent poison 
of Dr. Grimstone's table-beer, and he smilingly 
swallows large draughts of orange champagne 
or ginger-pop, while all the time his caitiff soul 
is longing for a pint of half-and-half. Lord B. 
is a leader of the Anti-Vivisection Movement ; 
will not shoot the pheasants (which he eats) ; 
allows Lady B.'s lapdog to sit on the dinner- 
table ; and expects his guests to get out of the 
carriage and walk uphill lest the horses should 
be tired. I admire his devotion to the cause of 
our Dumb Friends, but I cannot emulate Tom 
Garbage's passionate eulogies. " The most elo- 
quent, most moving, most convincing speech 
which I have ever heard in my life was one which 
your Lordship delivered at the annual meeting 



THE TOADY 303 

of the Society for Promoting the Use of Vege- 
tarian Boots. I have never forgotten it, and 
never can." That sentence is, barring the name 
of the Society, a transcript of a tribute paid, in 
my hearing, by a very flamboyant toady to an 
excellent member of the House of Lords, who 
had started a discussion at dinner on the merits 
of public speakers. 

The merely social Toady has been a favourite 
theme with satirists in every age. George Colman 
the Elder described him in a trenchant passage, 
which is as true as when it was penned : — 

" If there are any characters of this motley 
drama that move our wrathful indignation more 
powerfully than all the others, it is the swarm 
of humble retainers to the great that are for ever 
buzzing in the ear of Nobility. . . Such self-made 
dependents are engendered by the smiles of the 
great, like flies or maggots out of carrion by the 
rays of the sun. They are considered in general 
as runners for the great, that fetch and carry, 
come and go as they are bid. Though they 
flatter themselves that they mix in the polite 
world, they live but in the suburbs or outskirts 
of gentility ." 

Opulent old ladies are very specially the sub- 
jects of this kind of toadyism, and Tom Garbage 
if he sees his opening in social rather than philan- 
thropic circles, soon loses the last vestiges of 
manhood. 'Tis his to fill an unexpected vacancy 
at a dowager's dinner-table, and to make a fourth 



304 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

at a game which he detests. But he has his 
reward. He " gets asked out," as the choice 
phrase goes, and what can aspiring youth desire 
more ? 

In whatever company you meet the Toady, and 
in whatever sphere of life he operates, his essen- 
tial quality is still the same. Plausibility is the 
badge of all his tribe ; and his only miscalcula- 
tion is that, as Sir Henry Taylor says in his essay 
on "The Plausible Man/' "he forgets that what 
he pretends to be, other people may pretend to 
think him." 



CHAPTER XLIV 

THE BUCK 

It is an old-fashioned phrase for an old-fashioned 
character — the superannuated Beau. Joe Sedley 
was a Buck, and Major Pendennis was a Buck 
until he " became serious" and enjoyed Laura's 
reading aloud. A great Buck was Mr. Thorne 
of Ullathorne, and Bucks in their different ways 
were Sir John Chester and Mr. Tracy Tupman. 
A Buck, too, was Mr. George Chuzzlewit, the 
"gay bachelor cousin, who claimed to be young 
but had been younger/' and was renowned for 
"the bright spots on his cravats and the rich 
patterns of his waistcoats." Turning from fiction 
to real life, it may be noted that the creator of 
the Chuzzlewits was himself Buckishly inclined. 
Buckishness was hereditary in the Lytton family, 
passing, with due modification, from the first to 
the second Lord. Bucks of the first water were 
Mr. Alfred Montgomery and Sir Hastings Doyle 
and Mr. Augustus Lumley ; and a crowning 
instance of the Buck was Lord Beaconsfield, 
whom, in his seventy-third year, Matthew Arnold 
described as "very elaborately got up," with his 
dyed curls and his astrachan collar, or, as he 

3°S U 



306 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

used to appear in the evening, with his Blue 
Ribbon, and his Star blazing in diamonds and 
rubies. 

The distinguishing characteristic of the Buck is 
that he resolutely declines to grow old. Perhaps 
he fixes on a definite age — say from thirty-five 
to forty — at which he will remain ; and, like Mr. 
Chillingly Mivers, starts a wig in middle life so 
as to be beforehand with churlish Time. It is, 
I think, exceptional to meet a married Buck; and 
those few of the tribe who are married rather live 
as though they were not. The painful conscious- 
ness that one's wife at any rate must know one's 
age tends to discourage uxorious buckishness, 
and the horrible inquisitiveness of children makes 
havoc of simulated youth. So the Buck, as a 
rule, is a bachelor. He lives, perhaps, in the 
Albany, where many a generation of Bucks has 
predeceased him ; or he has chambers in St. 
James's Street, so as to be in the very heart of 
Clubland ; ^or he owns what the house-agents 
call a " Bijou Residence," comprising six rooms 
and a basement, in the purlieus of Belgravia. 
In the course of a morning's stroll through 
South-west London, I could point out whole 
rows and squares of these small houses, where 
the Dowager, the Spinster, and the Buck divide 
the land between them. Let us pause for a 
moment in Lilliput Square and survey the diurnal 
course of Tommy Tupman, descendant in the 
third generation of that blighted cavalier who 



THE BUCK 307 

spent the evening of his days on the Terrace at 
Richmond. 

Tommy Tupman rises late. He was at a ball 
till two o'clock ; then he supped lightly on hock 
cup and lobster-salad, and, by the time he wound 
his enamelled watch and slipped into his silk 
pyjamas, the early sparrows were twittering in 
Belgrave Square. Tommy sleeps sound and long, 
for his are the dreamless slumbers which wait 
on an easy conscience and a practised digestion. 
But the sun, notoriously no respecter of persons, 
forces his way unwelcomed into Tommy's bed- 
room ; and, after two or three ineffectual attempts 
to turn over and go to sleep on the other side, 
Tommy realizes that he is wide awake, and that 
the toils and responsibilities of another day have 
begun. As regards personal appearance, this 
is the least felicitous hour of his twenty-four, 
for he looks rather hollow under the eyes ; what 
Homer called the barrier of his teeth is visibly 
impaired; and his chin, like that of Major Pen- 
dennis, "glistens like an elderly dew." However, 
it does not much matter, for his servant is used 
to seeing him in all aspects and attitudes ; his 
cup of strong tea will rekindle the sparkle in his 
eye, and the list of the "To-day's" engage- 
ments in the Morning Post will reinvigorate his 
energies. His ablutions and toilet are conducted 
on an elaborate system. His bathroom contains 
every appliance for detergency and stimulation. 
Out of a lake-like plunge-bath he rises like Venus 



308 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

out of the sea. Twenty minutes' work with per- 
fectly-stropped razors restores to his rounded 
cheek the amiable smoothness of youth ; and it 
would be a breach of tact to enquire too curi- 
ously into the contents of all the silver bottles 
which stud his dressing-table. 

When it comes to dressing, no girl making 
ready for her first ball could be more scrupulously 
careful. The colour and harmony of suits and 
shirts and neckcloths are anxiously studied. The 
vital decision between a cat's-eye scarfpin and a 
turquoise is conscientiously weighed. Feet, per- 
haps a little reluctant after last night's labours, 
are thrust into boots miraculously small and 
shiny (this is a characteristic of the Buck in all 
ages), and a mechanical contrivance, euphemisti- 
cally called a Surgical Belt, reduces the expanded 
waist of middle age to a more picturesque cir- 
cumference. Breakfast, as a rule, is not much 
of an affair with the seasoned Buck. In this, 
as in so many other ways, the juvenile dandy, 
with his invincible appetite, has distinctly the 
advantage of his senior comrade. The " Cheery 
Boy" can encounter a grilled cutlet and a dish 
of devilled kidneys with a smile ; but the Buck 
shows a tendency to toy with his dry toast, and 
scarcely feels fit to face the day's campaign till 
he has pulled himself together with a small 
brandy-and-soda. The Buck no longer rides. 
His figure is not seen at its best on the outside 
of a horse. The lower part of his chest, as 



THE BUCK 309 

tailors call it, is, in spite of artificial restraints, 
too pronounced ; and, besides, his doctor has 
warned him that a man of his build falls heavy, 
and that a heavy fall is very inconsistent with 
the claims of digestion. So Tommy prefers a 
hansom, and in that Gondola of London he 
sallies forth in quest of luncheon. Sometimes 
he eats it at the club ; more often at the tables 
of ladies whose carriage he calls after the ball, 
or to whom he sends tickets for Hurlingham 
or Lord's. Whether at a private house or at 
a club, Tommy "does himself," as he would 
say, "uncommonly well/' for by two o'clock 
appetite has reasserted itself ; and then, after 
coffee, kiimmel, and a cigarette, the world is 
all before him where to choose. Perhaps he 
goes to a garden-party ; perhaps to one of those 
many places of outdoor amusement with which 
the suburbs abound ; perhaps, calculating on the 
fineness of the afternoon, he pays a round of 
calls on the people whom he does not wish to 
find at home ; perhaps, if he has been at a ball 
five nights running, he subsides into an armchair 
at the club, and only wakes in time for a cup 
of tea and a muffin somewhere between five and 
six. Of course the Buck passes a good deal of 
his time in clubs. He is not remarkable for 
keenness of intellectual taste, and his literary 
cravings are amply satisfied by the trayful of 
novels from the Circulating Library, which he 
finds in the Smoking-room. He plays a con- 



310 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

spicuous part in the daily life of the club, and 
is on the whole looked up to, though the junior 
members are a little inclined to make fun of 
him. His own attitude towards those juniors 
varies according to his temperament, and it is 
impossible to predicate of the Buck, as such, a 
particular line of conduct towards younger men. 
If waning vigour and increasing weight have 
disarranged his temper, he probably revenges 
himself by copious blackballing, and by a dogged 
resistance to every change, however palpably 
desirable, in the interior economy of the club. 
If, on the other hand, he is an amiable and 
eupeptic person, he makes close friends with 
the youngest of his fellow-clubmen, and, in spite 
of all differences in age and figure, imitates the 
most recent developments of tailoring and hosiery. 
He has already attained the condition which 
Edward Bowen described in one of his songs, — 
"Shorter in wind, as in memory long"; and, 
if he can secure an audience of very juvenile 
companions, nothing pleases him better than to 
discourse of Strawberry Hill in Lady Walde- 
grave's time, or the even remoter recollections 
of Lady Palmerston's Saturday evenings. His 
flow of reminiscences is only stemmed by the 
necessity of going to dress for dinner ; and, by 
half-past eight, the Buck, made glorious by the 
amplest of white waistcoats and the brightest of 
buttonholes, is deep in his repast. " His ex- 
hausted brain rallies under his glass of dry sherry, 



THE BUCK 311 

and he realizes all his dreams by the aid of 
claret which has the true flavour of the violet." 

Four hours later he may be seen, in spite of 
age and infirmities, plunging about in the orgies 
of the Kitchen Lancers, or, as dawn begins to 
peep, leading a cotillon with the energy of twenty- 
one. Mothers find him a convenient friend, 
for he is fond of supping, and occasions no 
anxiety on the matrimonial score. If he is 
well off, he is probably known as a fixed and 
incurable celibate ; and, if he belongs to the 
il Little Brothers of the Rich," he is too sensible 
a fellow to exchange comfortable bachelorhood 
for matrimony with a small house and a bad 
cook. Hugo Bohun, one of the Bucks in 
11 Lothair," said that he would not answer 
for himself if he could find an affectionate 
family with good shooting and first-rate claret. 
"'There must be many families with such con- 
ditions,' said Lothair. Hugo shook his head. 
' You try. Sometimes the wine is good and 
the shooting bad ; sometimes the reverse ; some- 
times both are excellent, but then the tempers 
and the manners are equally detestable.'" Hugo 
is still unmarried, though the intervening years 
have a little staled his infinite variety. 



CHAPTER XLV 

THE WORLDLING 

" We've no abiding city here ; 
This may distress the Worldling's mind." 

This dismal ditty may be found in a singular com- 
pilation called "The Church and Home Metrical 
Psalter and Hymnal" (by the Rev. William 
Windle), which helped to form my infant taste 
for sacred verse. Good Mr. Windle must have 
long since passed from among us, and I doubt if 
his hymn-book is still current even in evangelical 
circles ; but some of its images and illustrations 
have always lingered in my memory, and in early 
youth I longed to see a " Worldling." The oppor- 
tunity was granted to me when, as a Harrow boy, 
I went to stay in my holidays with my revered 
friend the late Dean Vaughan, at that time Vicar 
of Doncaster. One morning there arrived a letter 
from a well-known figure in society whom we 
will call Sir Thomas Timson, proposing to visit 
Doncaster Vicarage on his way south from his 
distinguished friends in Scotland. The pro- 
posal was accepted, not, I am bound to say, with 
entire complacency on the part of the host and 

hostess, and some rather elaborate arrangements 

312 



THE WORLDLING 313 

were made for Sir Thomas's proper reception. 
On the morning of the day fixed for his arrival, 
Dr. Vaughan, who had a knack, unusual among 
ex-schoolmasters, of encouraging boys to ridicule 
their elders, said to me in his blandest tone, 
" Have you ever seen Sir Thomas Timson ? " *' No, 
sir ; I have never seen any one." a Well, observe 
Sir Thomas carefully. He is well worth your 
attention. He is what the hymn-books call 'a 
Worldling,' and perhaps you will never again see 
so perfect a specimen of the type." So my oppor- 
tunity had come at last. Mr. Windle's creation 
was to appear in bodily form, and my dream of 
a Worldling was to be realized. I remember to 
this day the thrilling excitement of the arrival — the 
luggage-laden fly ; the anxious servant, half nurse, 
half valet ; the shrivelled form and puckered 
countenance of the aged baronet, with " Brutus " 
wig and false teeth, and, I think, a glass eye ; the 
quaint, old-fashioned enquiries and greetings, and 
the high-pitched, querulous voice. And then at 
dinner the studied yet pungent conversation ; the 
reminiscences, petrifying to a boy, of the French 
Revolution and the War and the Regency ; and, 
withal, the keenest interest in all that was going 
on at the moment in the actual world — politics 
and books, vintages and cookery, the houses which 
Sir Thomas had been visiting during the summer, 
and the parties which he meant to attend during 
the ensuing winter. All combined to suggest the 
impression that the speaker had lived from the 



314 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

beginning of time and intended to go on living 
till the crack of doom. In Sir Thomas Timson's 
presence " We've no abiding city here " seemed a 
mere flourish of rhetoric ; but even a school- 
boy could perceive that, if it were to be taken 
literally, it would " distress" Sir Thomas's "mind" 
most consumedly. Some forty years have sped 
their course, and I have never again set eyes on 
so perfect a specimen of the type, combining 
the external characteristics of Mr. Angelo Cyrus 
Bantam, Mr. Turveydrop, and Major Pendennis. 
But, though the outward form of the Worldling 
has changed with the changing years, his inner 
man remains the same in every age. 

In the best social satire of Queen Victoria's reign 
the satirist taught us to distinguish between "the 
Wholly Worldly" and "the Worldly Holy." Of 
the Wholly Worldly we may speak later on, but 
the Worldly Holy should be considered first. 
They are, it must be confessed, a plausible crew ; 
and, as the Worldling is of both sexes as well as 
of all periods, we may think of our Worldly Holy 
as a woman, though she by no means lacks her 
male correlative. 

The Worldly Holy, as I conceive of her, is a 
fond mother of marriageable daughters, and, in 
trying to arrange the future of these damsels, she 
blends the Church and the World in the most 
judicious proportions conceivable. She is, to 
use the current nomenclature, "moderately High 
Church "—scarcely a " Ritualist," certainly not a 



THE WORLDLING 315 

"Catholic." In her own phrase, she "likes to 
see things nicely done in Church/' but has no 
opinion of systems which drag one out of bed 
at seven in the morning after one has been up 
all night at a ball, and feels sure that growing 
girls should not go without meat on Friday. " Of 
course I am all in favour of teaching girls self- 
denial and that sort of thing, so during Lent we 
only go to matinees." The Worldly Holy likes 
a church which is near at hand, where the music 
is good, and where the preacher draws a smart 
congregation. Of course the worldly side of the 
Worldly Holy character impels her to take her 
daughters to the fullest possible round of the 
Season's gaieties ; and then, as she justly observes, 
it would be cruelty to expect them to do parochial 
work as well ; besides, parochial work involves 
the society of agreeable curates, and they are, 
of all the "detrimental" host, the most to be 
avoided. But, though she has no desire for a 
curate -son-in-law, the Worldly Holy admires 
and encourages church-going tendencies in her 
daughters' friends. "Dear Lord Farintosh, have 

you ever heard Mr. ? I am sure you would 

like him. He always gives one something to 
think of. And the morning service begins at 
such a comfortable hour — half-past eleven. I 
shall have a spare seat next Sunday, and I should 
be so delighted if you would use it, and then 
you can come home to luncheon with us. That 
will be delightful." When the Worldly Holy 



316 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

gives a dinner-party, she not uncommonly has 
a bishop to say grace ; this lends a kind of 
sanctity to the whole entertainment, and yet does 
not interfere with the legitimate enjoyment of 
fascinating daughters and desirable youths. Now 
and then she will drop in at a staid garden- 
party at Fulham or Lambeth — provided, of course, 
that those graver festivals do not clash with 
Osterley or Holland House, — and, with unerring 
instinct, will pick out from among the company of 
the preachers some secular youth who combines 
ecclesiastical tastes with great expectations. When, 
in the fulness of time, these manoeuvres have been 
conducted to a successful conclusion, the Worldly 
Holy mother keeps up appearances to the last. 
" Thank you ! Thank you ! Yes ; it is a mar- 
riage which really pleases us. They have been 
devoted to one another for ages, and are quite 
absurdly happy. Oh yes ; they will be tres bien 
installes from the first, and I suppose there will 
be wealth some day. But, as you know, that is 
not what one really cares for. It is everything 
that he is so bien pensant about the Church and 
all that sort of thing, and so really anxious to 
set a good example in Society." 

When we turn from the Worldly Holy to the 
Wholly Worldly, we dismiss these blandishments 
of femininity, and contemplate Man, poor man, 
in his undisguised baseness. The Wholly Worldly 
man — the "Worldling" — is a very unattractive 
object. He starts in life with a definite plan of 



THE WORLDLING 317 

absolute and calculated selfishness. If he must 
work for his living, his motto is Extremum occupet 
scabies — the devil take the hindmost. Whatever 
else happens, he must succeed, and others may 
go to the wall. In the choice of means he is not 
too scrupulous. Friendship, sympathy, generosity, 
are to him the words of an unknown tongue. 
He ruthlessly crushes out the smaller competitor, 
and, in effect if not in words, he says, with 

that practical philosopher Mr. Lowten, il D 

hurting yourself for any one else, you know." 

If his aspirations are not commercial but social, 
selfishness is still the active impulse of his life. 
While he is still poor and unknown, he is assiduous 
in paying court in quarters out of which any 
small advantage may be sucked. He will dine 
in Bloomsbury and go to dances in the Cromwell 
Road, drink tea with dowagers, and be hand in 
glove with younger sons. But, as he ascends the 
social ladder, these earlier assistants are discarded. 
He has got his foot planted in Piccadilly or 
Grosvenor Square, and Russell Square and Stan- 
hope Gardens know him no more. When the 
reigning Countess can be cultivated, the Dowager 
may be safely disregarded ; and the younger son 
is an undesirable companion compared with the 
eldest who will one day be the head of the family 
and already manages the shooting. The Worldling 
will look the other way when his former school- 
fellow at Great Mudport Free School or Lycurgus 
House Academy salutes him from the roof of 



318 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

the omnibus, and will turn the cold shoulder 
on his oldest friend if he is a man of no social 
mark. " Oh yes, Stubbins is an excellent fellow, 
and his people were very good to me in the old 
days when I first came up to London. But you 
know what it is — London is a terrible place for 
drifting apart, and it is difficult to keep up with 
old associations. However, I really must try to 
see a little more of him next season." 

Conversely, if the Worldling's acquaintances 
suddenly emerge from obscurity into fame, he 
becomes intensely loyal to Auld Lang Syne, and 
spares no opportunity of parading, or if necessary 
inventing, the early intimacy. "We were a great 
deal together in old days and I was always 
devoted to him. Such a good fellow ! and so 
thoroughly deserves all he has got ! " An agree- 
able variant on the same theme was offered by a 
Worldling who was asked whether he knew the 
wife of a gallant General who distinguished him- 
self in the South African War. " You must know 

Lady ," said a friend in London. " For she 

was Miss , and came from somewhere close 

to your old home." " No," replied the World- 
ling with artless candour. "We have never 
known her or her husband ; but we shall know 
them now." 

Or perhaps the Worldling has set his heart, 
or whatever substitute for that organ he possesses, 
on a political career, and then the opportunities 
for displaying his peculiar characteristics are 



THE WORLDLING 319 

plentiful. Within the last seven or eight years he 
has flourished like the green bay-tree. Perhaps 
he started as a Gladstonian Liberal, and spoke, 
with tears in his voice, about the Union of Hearts. 
When the Liberal standard passed into other keep- 
ing, he developed Jingo tendencies, talked at large 
of Empire, gloried in the South African War, and 
was a fervid defender of Chinese Labour. He 
has had his eye fixed steadily on the future, 
and has thought he saw a good time coming, 
when Imperialism would possess the earth. But 
it is the besetting weakness of the Worldling 
that he always " rats " at the wrong moment ; 
and, just as he has comfortably divested himself 
of his last shred of Liberal clothing, he finds 
to his dismay that the weather has changed, and 
that he must wrap himself up again in the dis- 
carded vesture of Peace, Retrenchment, and 
Reform. And the curious part of it is that the 
Worldling honestly believes that no one can 
remember his tergiversations. I have spoken 
of Liberal Worldlings ; but human flesh and 
blood are much the same in whatever camp 
they are found ; and I should not wonder if 
Mr. Balfour, in his present humiliations, can 
recall some Worldlings of his own party who 
not a year ago were beslavering him with the 
most unctuous adulation, and now go about 
talking of shilly-shally, double-dealing, and un- 
successful trickery. 

We need not follow the Worldling through all 



320 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

the changing scenes of life. Wherever he is, and 
whatever he does, his essential characteristic is 
baseness. He has no heart, no principle, no 
conscience. He is a false friend and a treacherous 
enemy. He lives for self only ; and his epitaph 
has been written by a great preacher in a poignant 
phrase : " The sensualist and the suicide are at 
least to be pitied in their end ; but the death of 
the average man of the world is only and utterly 
contemptible." 1 

1 J. R. Illingworth. 



CHAPTER XLVI 

L'ENVOI 

Let us part good friends ; " never forgetting " 
(as Thackeray said in closing his most pungent 
satire) " that, if Fun is good, Truth is still better, 
and Love best of all." Fun> Truth, Love. These 
are three of the best things in the world ; and 
now, since the conclusion of even the humblest 
work invites to retrospect, perhaps it is permis- 
sible to enquire whether the foregoing pages have 
made any contribution to the cause of Fun, of 
Truth, or of Love. 

I. Fun. — I disregard the Metaphysics of Fun, 
even as Sydney Smith, in reviewing a book on 
natural history, "disregarded the metaphysics of 
the Toucan." I do not, with Charles Kingsley, 
speculate on a sense of humour in the Creator. 
I do not enquire whether the sense of humour 
in man is a survival of something primeval, or 
an anticipation of something still to come. I do 
not even guess why some things strike us as 
funny and others do not, or why the same thing 
seems very funny to A. and not the least so to 
B. Wild horses should not drag me into a dis- 
sertation on the theory of Wit and Humour, for 

321 V 



322 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

I know that I should immediately find myself 
as completely befogged as the philosophers in 
" Happy Thoughts." " ' The essence of surprise 
is wit,' I remind Bob Englefield. I wonder if 
this is an original idea of mine. On thinking it 
over, I find I mean 'the essence of wit is sur- 
prise.' However, it doesn't matter, as Englefield 
answers 'Yes.'" Warned by that high example 
of analytical perplexity, I confine myself to 
actualities. I neither know nor care what con- 
stitutes the faculty of Fun — the sense of humour, 
— but I recognize it as one of the determining 
elements of human character. Between those 
who have and those who have not some sense 
of a joke there yawns an abyss which no science 
can bridge ; they never can look at life from the 
same point of view ; and they seem naturally 
inclined to regard one another with a suspicion 
which borders on ill-will. The prosaic, literal, 
and serious-minded man looks upon the lover of 
jokes as intellectually frivolous or morally un- 
sound. A man who manifests a sense of humour 
is commonly regarded in anti-humorous circles as 
reft of all capacity for thinking or feeling. It is 
true that he can neither think despairingly nor 
feel ferociously, for in the darkest hours the 
good Angel of Humour comes with glad tidings 
of a happiness which is independent of cir- 
cumstances. "The still, small voice," x as Mr. 
Sampson Brass said, " is singing comic songs 
within me, and all is happiness and joy." 



L'ENVOI 323 

Pathos and Humour are indeed inextricably 
intertwined, 

" For the foam-flakes that dance in life's shallows 
Are wrung from life's deep ;" 

but a sense of humour makes dulness impossible, 
and he who is delivered from dulness is de- 
livered also from despair. 

A curious symptom observable in those who 
either hate jokes or, like the Scotch editor, "jock 
wi' deeficulty " is their profound scepticism about 
all humorous experiences. You might much 
more easily persuade them that you had dis- 
covered Pharaoh's chariot-wheels in the Red 
Sea, or had identified the Man in the Iron Mask, 
than that you had witnessed the scene which 
you described or had heard with your own ears 
"a thing one would rather have expressed dif- 
ferently." My own firm conviction is that in 
this respect Fortune is absolutely impartial, and 
that we all are allowed, during our walk through 
life, to encounter the same number of ludicrous 
persons, situations, and sayings. The difference 
is not in our circumstances but in ourselves. 
"The eye sees in all things that which it brought 
with it the power to see " j and many are the 
wayfarers who plod year after year from Dan 
even to Beersheba and swear that all is barren. 
If I have contrived to supply any of my readers 
with a livelier notion of the road on which we 
all are travelling, I am well content. 



324 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

II. Truth.— Here comes the Literal Man — 
the " poring fellow" whom Dr. Johnson despised 
so heartily, — and says, "Ah, yes! It's all very 
well to try and amuse your readers. There 
is no harm in that; but are the stories which 
you tell them true ? " Heavens, what a question ! 
And put in what a tone ! Even so the savage 
Barrister at the Old Bailey thunders at the pavid 
witness. " Now, sir, on your oath — do you 
stick to your statement ? Aye or No." Well 
— on the whole, — Aye ; with due qualifications 
and reserves. A life which, if I may so ex- 
press myself, began early and has lasted for 
several years ; an observant habit ; and a retentive 
memory, have enabled me to set forth as things 
seen and heard by me a good many incidents 
which if they were invented would be absurd 
and overdone. Whenever I have used such 
phrases as "I saw this" or "I heard the other" 
I am to be understood as narrating my own 
experiences. But even here I have used a 
licence generally conceded to the social annalist. 
If a ludicrous incident occurred at York, there 
can be no harm in placing it at Canterbury. If 
the Bishop of Bungay is a goose, his diocese 
can be transferred to Babbacombe. If a Scotch 
Laird bullies his tenants, he can be transmo- 
grified into a Norfolk Squire. If Lord A. inter- 
feres unduly at an election, we elude his claim 
for damages by calling him the Duke of B. 

I hold that one is not justified in narrating as 



L'ENVOI 325 

part of one's own experience even the best- 
authenticated anecdotes ; but even here I make 
a distinction, and, when I state boldly that such 
and such a scene took place, I imply a nearer 
approach to historical accuracy than is conveyed 
in the formula " It is said." After all, there is 
both comfort and reason in Gibbon's dogma, 
that it does not really matter whether a historical 
character did or did not perform the action im- 
puted to him ; for it would not have been im- 
puted to him if it had not been the sort of thing 
which he habitually did. 

Truth, on its severer side, is Justice ; and at a 
moment of self-examination one may profitably 
ask oneself whether the delineation of one's 
various types has_,been true, and therefore just. 
John Bright^, once asked Sir Robert Inglis — the 
pre-Adamite Member for the University of Oxford 
— whether he really believed what he had said in 
a recent speech. Sir Robert, instead of pulling 
his interrogator's nose, laid his hand on his own 
heart, and replied, " It may surprise you, but 
upon my honour and conscience I do." Simi- 
larly, I reply to my own self-questionings that, 
as far as a man can judge of his own handiwork, 
I do not think that I have offended against 
justice. Tyranny, cruelty, greed, political and 
social oppression, unscrupulous self-seeking, sub- 
serviency to base ideals — these and others like them 
are elements in character and in life with which we 
ought to make no terms. "The time has come," 



326 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

wrote Keble in 1833, "when scoundrels must be 
called scoundrels ; " and that time seems to have 
come again. Carlyle, repudiating Monckton 
Milnes's exaggerated humanitarianism, said, " I 
know wicked men — men whom I would not live 
with ; men whom, under some conceivable cir- 
cumstances, I would kill or they should kill me." 
I plead for a clear judgment in these plain issues 
of Right and Wrong ; and, if fun, or humour, or 
satire, or sarcasm, can help us to see things as 
they really are, it is well employed. 

III. Love. — There are some words in Carlyle's 
" Cagliostro " which have constantly been running 
in my mind since I took these types in hand : 
" Such is the world. Understand it, despise it, 
love it ; cheerfully hold on thy way through it, 
with thy eye on higher loadstars." It might 
perhaps be urged that a Love it " is the precept 
which, in a series of social sketches, it was least 
easy to obey. It might be conceded that Truth, 
both in its sense of accurate narration and in 
its sense of just judgment, had been fairly 
observed ; and yet it might be argued that Love 
was essentially incompatible with a satirical hand- 
ling of personal or typical peculiarities. But 
this would be, I think, a quite unfounded doc- 
trine. I will not turn for a refutation to the 
great masters of humour and satire : I confine 
myself to personal experience. It is by no 
means necessary to hate the person of whom 
you make fun, or to be hated by him. Just as it 



L'ENVOI 327 

has been said that no man believes in his re- 
ligion till he dares to joke about it, so it might 
be said that, when affection or friendship is 
secure, one can venture to " chaff " without fear 
of consequences. Then, again, it is not the 
"cleverest or the wisest or the most learned folks 
on earth who are always the most lovable ; and 
one may see the quaint limitations of the Under 
graduate or the Curate or the Subaltern, and yet 
love him as sincerely as George Warrington 
loved Arthur Pendennis or Austin Elliot loved 
Charles Barty. A hyper-sensitive author wrote 
lately to a critic, " I never can make out whether 
you are chaffing or in earnest about my books." 
The critic replied, " I am always both. My 
seriousness naturally expresses itself in chaff ; " 
and that is an attitude which real intimacy never 
resents. It is a defect almost inherent in an 
album of Social Silhouettes, that the less ad 
mirable types tend to be the more numerous. 
Certainly a Picture-Gallery exclusively composed 
of the good and great would be a rather unin- 
teresting collection. We must find room on our 
walls for the villains and the adventuresses who 
have made so large a part of history ; and it need 
not be inferred that the numerical proportion 
between good and bad in our gallery corresponds 
to the proportion in actual life. 



328 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES 

I hope that in what has gone before it has been 
possible to read, between the lines of ridicule and 
sometimes of invective, some hint or suggestion of 
the character which the writer holds to be ideal. 
And here it is to be borne in mind that the Ideal 
Character is not necessarily gifted, or striking, or 
popular, or even widely attractive. The man who 
owns it may be very homely, very insignificant ; 
as the world judges, very uninteresting. But the 
character itself bears the sign-manual of Heaven, 
writ large in Purity, and Courage, and Gentleness, 
and Unselfishness ; and the man, by a secret power 
which he has never realized, leavens the world 
in which his lot is cast. " It is by the work of 
grace in lives such as his that both the Church 
and Society are braced and sanctified ; it is from 
such lives that a truer, loftier, more disinterested, 
sterner, yet withal, most assuredly, not less 
affectionate, spirit than that of common men 
radiates into and elevates an entire generation." 1 

1 Dr. Liddon. 



POSTSCRIPT 

The substance of this book has appeared in 
the Manchester Guardian, and is reproduced 
by the kind permission of Mr. C. P. Scott. 

Easter, 1906. 



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